


'I love you' is a thing you say to people who are dying

by Quinara



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Dragons, F/M, Magic, Romance, season: b7, the basement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:04:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 104,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4483937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 7.  Buffy/Spike.  Some Watchers survived, because sometimes people do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PART ONE (free association)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy this fic! With any luck it's not too harrowing, though it is fairly angsty along the way. Huge thanks to my beta, Bogwitch - who also made me this beautiful banner!!
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> “I came because… You know why I came back here. I need your help. I never wanted to do this on my own; I don’t think anybody should be alone. But I know sometimes you have to be, and I know that this time I have to be. They need me to do this and I need your help.”

  


**I**

\-- _afterwards_ \--

If Giles had been there, Buffy wondered if he would have been on her side. More than likely, he would have ganged up with the rest of them, but it wouldn’t really have made sense. All this time he'd been pressuring her to take charge, to show all these girls how they were supposed to survive. So…

It wasn’t long after she’d come back from the Shadowmen. They were all still in the living room – Robin was packing the shadow casters away while everyone else, pretty much, milled around.

They’d asked her what had happened and she’d told, starting with the vision of the Hellmouth and what it was that lay ahead of them. Willow had looked spooked, turning to Althanea and Kennedy, which made Buffy suppress a frown. It seemed like the big gun wasn’t quite yet back up to power.

Maybe that was to be expected, but Kennedy caught her expression anyway. She was the one to snap at her. “Anything else you figured out on your road trip?” she said. “You know, anything useful?”

Nigel the Watcher chimed in, not so helpfully. “Yes,” he added. “I dare say this is the first time the casting ritual has been used in centuries, if not in all time.” He glanced at Robin, still annoyed, apparently, about the other man’s subterfuge. “There was a reason, after all, that the Council didn’t prioritise the apparatus’ return when we found it missing from our inventories.”

Buffy looked at Spike, still feeling a little winded from her fight. She didn't feel like talking straight away.

Even Spike, though, he seemed unrelenting. There was something different about him, at least to Buffy's eyes. Leaning against the doorway into the hall, he was wearing his coat again, swallowed up and sallow.

She didn’t know what it was about that jacket – maybe something in how no one made outerwear that heavy in California, not for the city. None of Buffy's leather clothes had a chance of lasting thirty years of fighting. It wasn't just the coat, though; it was something in the way he stood, the set of his face.

Whatever it was that was different, it meant Buffy had no back-up as she began to tell her tale. She wasn't an amazing storyteller, but she tried. Probably she didn't get across most of the themes, but she told them about the chains, the creepy ritual...

It didn’t seem to sink in. Everyone's expression was blank, their eyes only lighting up when she mentioned the power boost, and what that might have meant.

“Are you serious? When you stand there preaching at all of us about…? You’re a hypocrite!”

That was what Kennedy said, and it was like she was speaking for all of them. Somehow, they hadn’t got it, what Buffy had meant about power. With all the agreeing faces, as worn out as her mom's furniture, it seemed as though they thought she didn’t care where power came from. Or at least it seemed as though they didn’t care, not when Buffy was the one supposed to take it.

The accusation was thrown like a punch, as though Kennedy intended to hurt her. Getting hit, of course, was a regular experience for Buffy, so after a moment recovered and fought back. “No,” she bit out, looking at Kennedy and her reflection in the picture above the desk. “I’m standing here as the one who would have been able to resist – because I _know_ the power I have inside me.”

“They said you would protect us.” Buffy turned towards the new voice. It was Rona, who was sitting on the arm of the couch with another group of Potentials around her. Vi and Amanda looked worried, not right in Buffy’s face, but not like they disagreed. “How are you gonna protect us from an army of those things?” Rona continued, framed by the beige-blue light that seeped in through the curtains. “If you won’t…”

What time was it? Buffy didn’t know. She’d been digging at sunset, then been thrown into the midday sun. It had been too long a day.

“She can’t protect us,” one of the other Potentials said; one of the ones whose name Buffy didn’t know. Unless… Was she called Caridad? She was from San Diego, that much Buffy remembered. She was talking over her shoulder, like Buffy wasn’t there. “Didn’t you hear what the First said? She knows she can’t.”

“Didn’t you hear what _she_ said?” Another one accused, her hot eyes flicking to Buffy’s. “She doesn’t want to.”

“I’m not trying to protect you!” Buffy insisted, throwing up her hands as she walked straight into some remains of the coffee table.

Everybody looked at her, including Robin, who had a particularly unimpressed expression on his face. Anya seemed bored; Xander had his eyebrows knitted together as though he was trying to see her point.

“I’m trying to teach you,” Buffy explained, cutting away from Kennedy’s glare and back to the girls by the window. “ _How_ to be strong; _how_ to be a Slayer; _how_ to protect yourselves.” God, it was late and she was so tired; she didn’t know how else to put this; hadn’t they been over this hours ago? “When something _chains you up_ and tries to force its way inside you,” were the words that came out of her, solid and full and with no small trace of sarcasm, “that is not the moment to say _yes, please_.”

It scared them, this idea. Buffy could recognise that. The expression in Rona’s eyes turned to hate and the group visibly shrank into itself. Behind her, Buffy didn’t hear anyone move, but in the periphery of her vision she noticed when Spike slipped out into the hall, then the depths of the house.

It was all happening again; rinse, repeat. He wasn’t wrong to leave, at least Buffy didn’t want to yell at him about it. Her eyes somehow caught Xander’s, and even he was looking at her like she was being harsh.

It was Lydia who broke the silence this time, her tone icy. “We don’t need any more of this tonight,” she said, her eyes burning when Buffy glanced at her. God, maybe she was right. “Girls,” Lydia continued stridently, over Buffy’s head, “you should be in bed. We have physical training early in the morning.”

They listened to her, that was the most ridiculous thing. This Watcher treated them like schoolchildren and they listened, shuffling off upstairs.

And that was that. Everyone took their cue that the meeting had broken up and started talking, moving around and getting ready for the night. Buffy was left in the middle of living room, standing amongst a pile of broken wood, still feeling the slick, sucking feeling on her legs where the demon energy had swarmed around her.

Before she left to help arrange upstairs for bedtime, Dawn came over and touched Buffy on the arm. No one paid them any attention. “Hey,” her sister said softly, snapping Buffy out of what was still an experience, pretty much, not a memory. “It didn’t…” What she was suggesting, Buffy was pretty sure neither of them knew. “Did it?” Dawn added, hopefully. “Are you OK?”

Looking into her sister’s big, caring eyes, it was easy to lie. “I’m fine,” Buffy said, forcing herself to smile.

Dawn was taller than her, these days, but she still acted like the baby, kicking at the pieces of wood around them. “What you said,” she continued, in a low voice. “About protecting us…”

 _I will always protect you,_ Buffy wanted to promise, because she should have been able to. Dawn didn’t deserve any of this, and she should have been able to avoid everything the others would have to learn. As it was, she’d learned better than them at a younger age.

When she thought about it, Buffy didn’t know what to do with the guilt. “Get some rest,” was what she said, because of that.

\-- _earlier_ \--

When the group of them first made it home from the Initiative, the house was empty. Giles and the girls weren’t back yet, clearly, but for some reason nearly everyone else was gone as well. The only light came from the kitchen, where Kennedy was staring at a steaming teapot.

“Kennedy?” Buffy asked, still holding onto Spike, who was still caught up in Althanea’s floating spell. He was unconscious, silent as a training dummy, but upright by her side. Really, Buffy didn’t want any of the Potentials to see him like this, but it didn’t seem like there were many other options. “I thought Will was making the tea for _you_?”

“Yeah…” Kennedy replied, not turning around. She didn’t seem all that interested in talking. Eventually she pulled herself into it, making the effort to look Buffy's way. “There was some role-reversing, magical…” As she caught sight of them all, however, her tone completely changed. “Oh my god, _Ms. Chalmers?_ ” The subdued sarcasm left her and spontaneously, it seemed, Kennedy was suddenly running over to Lydia and wrapping her in a hug. Buffy was forgotten. “I thought you were dead; I can’t believe it!”

OK, so there was really, really no reason to feel jealous of someone who seemed to have earned the respect and affection of a girl she’d been given to mentor. Someone who had earned _Kennedy’s_ respect and affection. Like any good reality show contestant, Buffy hadn’t planned on making friends with these girls, so it couldn’t bother her that someone else had.

As the two caught up, in any case, and the others started joining in, Buffy found herself distinctly uninterested, and not overly impressed about being ignored in her own house.

Still, she ignored them, leading the floating Spike over to the basement and heading down into the more familiar dark. Soon she had him settled back on the cot, able to manipulate his body into lying down. Buffy took a seat on the floor by his head, waiting.

Before the others came down, however, Spike started to stir, roused by the comfort of the blankets or for some other reason. “Where am I?” he asked.

Buffy figured that it might have been a good idea to switch the light on. “We’re home,” she said shortly, still annoyed that she was annoyed. Was this how it was going to be? The Watchers were now here to take over the operation, leaving her as little more than a landlord? “We were… I guess we were rescued. Some of the Watchers survived.” She glanced at him. “Including your fanclub.”

Rolling over, Spike shot her a look as if to say she was the silliest cow in existence. Or some other Spike-like insult. “Right,” he said, as if he didn’t have the energy to articulate anything more. “We got a – Ow; fuck.” He winced, and with a jerk of adrenaline Buffy remembered the real current crisis. “Ow; ow; _ow_ …”

“Shh…” she soothed immediately, turning onto her knees and leaning over Spike’s head. He was grinding it into the pillow. This time Buffy didn’t even hesitate to graze her fingers across his helmet of hair, lean close and try to comfort him. “Don’t…”

 _This can’t happen now,_ she told herself, willing reality to bend towards her desire as Spike lost even the ability to swear. There were tears in her eyes, which Buffy really didn’t want to be there. Things were not on schedule for Spike to make her care this much about him, not now. _I refuse to let this happen,_ she continued to think, not quite sure what idea the feeling was in response to. _Please,_ she wanted to say out loud.

“Dunno how much more of this I can take,” Spike breathed out after a few seconds, his voice small and quiet. Buffy frowned, meeting his eyes but not sure what to say.

Ultimately, Buffy decided the best course of action was, well, action. After allowing herself one more second to be with Spike, something unspoken changing between them, she stood up and marched over to the stairs. “Althanea!” she bellowed up into the kitchen, not entirely recognising the harsh tone of her own voice. “Will you _please_ …”

“No need to shout, Miss Summers,” the witch interrupted, appearing in the kitchen doorway. After flicking on the lights she made her way down at a leisurely pace. It was hard not to read Travers-style superciliousness into every step. “Now; where’s the patient?”

Wordlessly, Buffy led her over to Spike. He was lying back, staring at the ceiling like a corpse, and Buffy’s heart was in her throat.

“Ah, William,” Althanea addressed him – and he moved, turning his head too look at her like she’d taken him by surprise, or he hadn’t sensed she was there. “What’s causing all this bother, hmm?”

Buffy didn’t trust this witch, but she let her come close. She knelt down beside the cot and pressed a hand to Spike’s forehead, that now-familiar pink glow spreading from her fingers. It made Buffy feel warm and comforted, but she still didn’t trust it, crossing her arms as she watched.

“Well,” Althanea said, her hand still glowing. “You’ve had rather a few people rummaging around in here, haven’t you?”

Spike groaned, but it was hardly a response. Buffy stepped forward, and as if she had sensed her Althanea turned her head.

“I can feel the microchip,” she told Buffy, her grandmotherly face serious and professional in contrast with all the drapey embroidery she was wearing. She had every earth mother cliché figured out to a T. “The General suggested I might like to repair it, but it should be easy enough to dissolve, if you wanted to have it gone entirely.”

“Have it…?” Buffy repeated, not entirely certain what the other woman was asking. She just wanted Spike’s pain gone; she didn’t care about the chip.

“I can remove the chip,” Althanea confirmed. “Or fix it up.”

Caught by surprise, Buffy glanced at Spike. It felt like he should have been the one making the decision, but he was out of it, scowling again with his jaw clenched shut. As it was, she knew she would be the one the others would expect to have control over this; she was the one they would expect answers from.

In the end, the decision didn’t take very long. “Remove it,” Buffy instructed, her voice certain.

Althanea nodded, turning back to her glowing hand. Tension seemed to thrum through her for a moment, but then Spike slumped as if released.

It was over. Even if it looked like Spike had lost consciousness again, Buffy was certain it was over.

By the way Althanea frowned, though, it didn’t quite seem as though she agreed. The glow hadn’t faded from her hand. Catching Buffy’s eye, she said, “It’s done. But –” she continued, before Buffy could say anything, “there’s something else in here.”

\-- _later_ \--

For some reason, Spike realised later, it was as though Buffy didn’t seem to think the witch's plan would be a terrible, terrible idea. “It was only a suggestion,” the Slayer explained while he stared at her, a stabbing pain in his cranium and her eyes putting needles through his heart. “Althanea,” the girl defended herself, sorrowfully, “she said that this would be a way to diffuse the trigger…”

“I’m sure, love,” Spike replied, because he was. _That_ part was hardly the problem. Whether she’d see it without him wringing her neck he didn’t know. “Just think you're forgetting this frying pan's sitting on a giant pile of burning petrol.”

“And what does _that_ mean?” Buffy asked, thankfully now just annoyed. She had a habit of doing that when Spike got figurative. She wasn’t a particularly poetic soul, their Buffy. It made Spike wonder what he saw in her, those times when she decided to want for nuance.

Battling the tick in his jaw, Spike was little more combative than he should have been, but again he had the pain in his skull to contend with. “It means,” he bit out emphatically, hoping for this to be over, “that the trigger might be dangerous, but at least we know what’s going on with it. Putting yourself _in my head_ on the say-so of a witch who’s spent the last thirty years or who knows what married to the biggest bastard in the supernatural world – well, I shouldn’t need to explain that it’s a recipe for disaster…”

They were downstairs, in the basement, like they always were. Buffy was about to head off for the day and Spike was awake far too early, thanks to the chip knocking around the rhythms in his head. It was nice to know that it was gone, but it was dangerous. He couldn’t quite see why Buffy didn’t take the whole thing as suspicious. That thing had been in his head for years; earth witch or no earth witch he didn’t quite see why this random, ridiculously-named woman had found it so very easy to take out of his skull.

Sitting on the end of the mattress, Buffy was a picture of rejection. She was about a foot from Spike's feet and her skin had a harsh pall in the humming basement light. Her mouth was tight and she was looking out over to the other side of the room. He got the most of it, but Spike didn't know why she was sitting so close. “You know,” she said, like she’d decided to pick this particular argument, “maybe you do need to explain. Willow’s been in my head; it was fine.”

“Yeah,” Spike agreed, feeling the crick in his wrists as he nodded. He was sitting up; leaning back on his hands. He couldn’t talk to her like she was thick; that just made things worse. “But that jaunt was a little different, don’t you think?”

“Why?” Buffy asked, like she actually didn’t get it. She raised her chin at him. “D’you not trust me or something?”

“What?” Spike asked, before he’d even had much chance to take the question in. Eventually he parsed the words, eased them out one by one – and then he found himself annoyed. The point was that some geas planted by the greatest and most primary force for evil the world had ever known was not entirely comparable to whatever feedback loop of catatonia had paralysed Buffy back when Dawn had been taken. The point wasn't whatever pantomime they were playing out this week.

Buffy said nothing, her gaze burning.

Yet it was more fool Spike, really, because he was rather invested in this particular pantomime. “Why would you ask me that?” he challenged her.

Buffy rolled her eyes, as if he was the one being emotional. Spike figured she was probably right. “Well, it seems pretty obvious,” she said, sarcastic as she rose to her feet and walked three paces away from him. Great. “Althanea’s the real deal,” she claimed, turning back and putting her hands on her hips. “You know that as well as I do.” She paused; Spike stared at her again, not quite taking all of this in. “So all I’m seeing is that you don’t want me getting anywhere near your thoughts. I understand, you know, I do,” she added, looking down at her feet. “And you know,” she repeated, turning that thought back over itself, more seriously. “I do,” she finished, as if she did.

Thing was, she didn’t. “Now, hang on…” As far as Spike could tell, from the wounded glance she shot at him, she was making this into something that it really was not. “That’s not fair.” A year ago he’d have thrown himself at this moment, but Buffy… She didn’t get to test him like this, not when it came to his feelings. Hadn’t he waited for her in the First’s torture chamber, for _weeks_? He’d barely known his own name by the time she’d come, and still he’d waited.

Buffy, naturally, seemed to get some perverted joy from playing dense.

Leaning forward, Spike swung his legs around so he could face her on the cold cement floor. Every limb he had ached to do it. “Don’t you get it?” he asked, standing up anyway, suppressing wobbles. “I’m not having you in my head…”

She interrupted, though, before he could finish that point. “No,” the girl said, shaking her hair and still not looking at him. “It’s no big, really.” And then she was leaving, turned on her feet and heading up the stairs. “I’ve gotta go to work.”

Spike watched her go, shaking trying to figure out what had just happened.

\-- _earlier_ \--

“It’s darkness, like a web,” Althanea explained. As though she was expending effort for the first time, the witch shut her eyes and tilted her head slightly to one side. “It’s not the demon part of him; it’s not demonic. It’s tied into…” She paused for a moment. “Feelings; memories; actions – I’m not sure…”

“The trigger,” Buffy said, suddenly sure she knew what the witch was talking about. God; she’d thought that had been deactivated. “The First,” she explained, as the witch withdrew into herself and turned to look at Buffy again. “It brainwashed him; put something in his brain – we don’t know…” This news made Buffy’s heart sink, seriously deep. “It was able to make him kill again, even with the chip. He didn’t remember when he’d done it; didn’t know who he was.”

Althanea was silent for a moment, apparently listening carefully. It was almost vindicating, to be listened to, but Buffy didn’t dwell on that. “That sort of magic,” the witch said eventually, withdrawing her hand from Spike’s head so the glow faded. “It’s an act of manipulation. Or, at least, that would be the most efficient way to construct something so powerful.” Slumping back on her heels, she was silent again, apparently thinking this time. “Compulsion spells are difficult,” she added, glancing at Buffy as if to be sure she was listening.

There was no question, though; she had Buffy’s full attention.

“Without a focus and without contact, retaining control over a subject requires a great deal of energy," the witch continued. "But,” she answered herself, her gaze wandering away, “to make something happen that already has, to provoke a reaction based on remembered stimuli… Maybe an emotional reaction, which may be tied to a physical response? It’s possible. It’s certainly possible…”

“How do we get rid of it?” Buffy interrupted, moving her hands to her hips and watching as Spike slept. That seemed to be what he was doing; he was breathing again, like she remembered he used to breathe until sleep had entirely come on him. His eyes were still shut, but he looked peaceful now. “Break the spell?” She could only imagine that a blow to the First that would be, if they could get rid of this now. The day wouldn’t have been entirely wasted.

Althanea prevaricated, even though Buffy was already set, as far as she was concerned. “Well, it would depend how the spell worked,” the witch said, slightly flustered. “If there is a ‘trigger’, as you say, we would need to know what it relates to, what memory it conjures in his mind.” She waved a hand, uncertainly. “Either,” she continued, “we would need to break the connection between that memory and the physical response the First has associated it with, or – which I suppose would be the most reliable solution – we would need to resolve the, er, emotional hang-up, which, well…” The witch frowned, finally, looking at Spike again. “It must be what’s powering the the compulsion.”

“So,” Buffy asked, trying to take it all in, “he needs a shrink?” She couldn’t quite believe it, but after she’d said it the whole idea did sort of make some sense. At the end of the day, if people did get enough psychological help, would there still be evil in the world?

Shaking her head, Buffy dismissed that thought. Way too philosophical for this point in the apocalypse. Also, Maggie Walsh was so the exception to that rule.

“A Prokaryote stone would probably be the best place to begin,” Althanea continued as if Buffy hadn’t even spoken. “Though where on _earth_ you’d get hold of one at this time of year I do not…” Then, glancing Buffy’s way, she tuned back in. “No, not a shrink,” she said, clapping her hands together in her lap. Leaning on her thighs, she rose steadily to her feet. “He must confront what will be, presumably, one of the darkest points in his emotional memory – and make peace with it.”

Buffy gulped, gaze falling yet again to the figure on the bed. She liked to think that she knew Spike pretty well, but she couldn’t imagine what sort of thing Althanea meant. The only emotional low point she could think of, the one that had sent Spike to get a soul, that didn’t seem quite like the thing the First would be able to make use of. He was an old vampire, by most standards, and if her life was anything to go by, all those extra years just meant more and deeper regrets.

“I could set the process in motion,” Althanea was now saying, apparently able to think out loud and nonetheless reach a conclusion inside her head. “It won’t be as – emphatic, or force the issue, the way we might still well need a stone to help us with. But I could set his mind in the right direction.”

Buffy blinked at Althanea's kindly face, which didn’t seem to be saying anything all that kind. The woman was in front of her now, their gazes level.

“You might be able to help him,” Althanea added, as if Buffy had a better nature she could appeal to. Buffy herself wasn’t so sure these days. “It should be possible for someone to observe the memory with him; help him think it through.”

“I…” Struck by the possibility, Buffy hesitated. It would be one thing to have the trigger out of Spike, but quite another for her to have a hand in doing it. She didn’t like to think of herself as someone who shied away from emotional intimacy, but – who was she kidding? If that had ever been her speciality, it had long since gone by the wayside. She had the bitter ex-boyfriend and the half-crazy ex-something to prove it. “I’ll have to ask him about it,” Buffy told Althanea. She couldn’t even be sure Spike would go for it, anyway. He was all about the emotional revelations, but that was in circumstances he could control. And it was _her_ , so…

The witch nodded, smiling with something that looked like sympathy. “It’s not a decision to take lightly,” she agreed, even after they’d zapped Spike’s chip out in about two seconds flat.

“Thanks –” Buffy began, thinking this was the moment to end the conversation. She was interrupted, of course, as Willow came barrelling down the stairs, apparently feeling chipper now she’d heard about the new members of the household.

“Althanea!” she said, looking excited, starting to babble. “I had no idea you were coming!”

“Oh!” The witch said, her expression brightening as she turned away. “Miss Rosenberg…”

Immediately they ignored her, their faces brighter than anyone’s who looked at Buffy’s. She let them catch up, distracted again by the figure now deep in sleep, no longer breathing on the basement cot.

\-- _later_ \--

“I don’t understand this,” was what Buffy told them all, when everything came out. At the gravesite, she had channelled her anger, kept it at a low smoulder, but now they were looking at her, hungry and needing. It was like they were expecting some sort of memorial, some lengthy funeral service that would take them through the night. They wanted it from her.

Standing by the mantelpiece, the entire idea filled Buffy with rage. Before she could stop herself, she threw her shovel across the floor, about three foot so that it clanged dramatically on the wood. “What happened today should _not_ have happened,” she told them, livid with her anger. “ _What_ do you have to say for yourselves?” she asked, looking around and meeting the eyes of anyone who dared look up. “Any of you?”

Because you could only ever take the nerd out of high school, Willow was the first to own up. “Buffy, I’m sorry,” she said, clearly ridden with useless, wretched guilt. “I thought I felt something, but I didn’t know if… I couldn’t be sure…”

Althanea was somewhere else, so Buffy couldn’t find her to glare at alongside Willow. Kennedy, though, was right there, and seemed to think her girlfriend had nothing to apologise for. As Willow continued, she interrupted, brusquely comforting, “Stop beating yourself up. It’s a tragedy; no one could have known…”

“Wrong,” Buffy said, because she was sick of this. Kennedy stared back, shocked as Buffy told her, “Chloe could’ve known. God, if no one else, Chloe _should_ have known.” They all stared at her; Buffy took their attention and ran with it. “She should’ve been smarter and she should have fought back.”

“You’re out of line,” Kennedy replied immediately. From the gasps in the room, she wasn’t the only one who thought it – but she was the only one who dared speak up.

Taking in how the Potential looked, framed by the back living room wall and her hand on Willow’s arm, her feet spread easily like she was ready for a fight, Buffy had the thought she sometimes had, that this girl was the only one who acted like a Slayer. Not like the way that Buffy would, but she _had_ it in ways that the others didn’t.

It still didn’t mean that Buffy wouldn’t smack her down. “What?” she asked Kennedy bluntly. “You thought we were gonna stand here and cry about her? She’s dead.” In among the other reactions, Buffy's peripheral vision caught Spike raising a particularly sarcastic eyebrow. It pretty much enraged her further. “Dozens of girls just like her have already died,” Buffy continued, still addressing Kennedy. “The First’s already killed them.” She shoved an arm towards Nigel and Lydia, who were standing by the desk. “The First’s already killed pretty much everyone they know, but d’you see us crying about _them_?”

“But we knew her!” It was Amanda who said that, gathered with the other Potentials on and around the couch.

It was all empty words. Buffy could feel it, that emptiness, if not much of anything else. She turned to look at them, taking in their traumatised faces, the way they held themselves like they’d already been defeated. “None of you knew her,” she told the girls harshly, wondering if they’d ever get it. “You figure because you remember her favourite cereal, what she liked to read before she went to sleep, what, that makes you all experts?” They all looked down, and Buffy didn’t know how to make them get this, to make them see what they could become. “Who was she when she was all alone, huh? When death was staring her in the face? Who was she then? Did any of you know?”

They had no answer, and Buffy wanted to scream. It was locked inside her head.

“You girls,” it came out of her in words, all her frustration. None of them wanted this – she knew none of them wanted this – but they acted like they thought she did. “You came here to fight, to survive, and – and all you do is sit here _in my house_ , waiting to die.”

Some of them looked pissed off, which was really better than nothing. If she’d been feeling optimistic, Buffy even wondered if she might have been getting through to them.

For some reason, though, that was the moment when Spike thought it was time to disrespect her and start walking out of the room. Like he was a special case, just because of what she felt for him. Like what she was saying didn’t apply.

“And where the hell are _you_ going?” Buffy called after him, annoyed.

Spike stopped in the doorway, turned back around. “What?” he asked, mostly nonchalant but still a little pissed off, it seemed to Buffy, from Wood’s tour that afternoon. God damn him. “Sorry,” he said, clearly not meaning it, “I’ve got things to do. Not this.”

“Right,” Buffy said, warningly. He didn’t get it, though, even after a second or two. Clearly he thought everything she was saying didn’t apply to him. “So,” she asked, “if I need a consult on running away, should I, you know, call you? Or d’you figure I can just rescue you from wherever you end up?”

They hadn’t spoken all that much since the night after her date. From the way Spike’s eyes narrowed, he clearly thought it was more than a little unfair for her to turn on him now. “Got something to say to me as well, then, is that it?” he asked her, his own warning in his voice.

Buffy didn’t tend to heed warnings. Hands on her hips, she stared Spike down. “I just said it. You hold back any more, you’re gonna fall over.” _We’re all holding back._

“Hold _back?_ ” Spike took a step forward. Everyone else was silent, and Buffy imagined they were watching the two of them. She didn’t lose Spike’s gaze, even when he laughed at her. “Buffy, I’m not holding back. What I have,” he added, finally flinging the accusation at her, “is a concept called privacy.”

“Oh, you have a problem about what I said, do you?” Buffy replied, forgetting for the moment that they had a public audience. “Gee, you could’ve fooled me.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Spike challenged her.

“That soul has been making you a walkover,” Buffy told him bluntly, betraying every moment of tenderness between them, trying to explain how she would always betray him.

Spike’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Buffy didn’t back down, but as he took one look around the crowded room, she was a little worried about what he was going to say. “You tell them all about me,” he snapped at her, and Buffy knew she’d won this game of chicken. “You hang all my private business out for public consumption and you never mention _once_ how I do it all for _**you**_.”

Everyone apart from Buffy jumped on that last word; she could feel them. She was pretty sure they were all staring at her, but she didn’t drop her gaze from Spike’s eyes, trying to figure out when he would realise that all of their private business was expendable, including this. More than this.

Why he thought roaring at her would get a reaction, Buffy didn’t know. Sure, she got a kick of adrenaline, but all that did was bring everything into sharper focus. “You did it for yourself,” she told Spike, not trying to be harsh but hearing it in her voice all the same. His nostrils flared – and Buffy knew that she was hurting him. Thing was, it had to be said. “You couldn’t live with what you’d become, so you threw it all away.”

“How –” Spike began, taking one step towards her.

Buffy wouldn’t let him speak, challenging him, “And what’s that done for you, huh?” She’d seen his fear of her, of everything; the First was slowly destroying them all. “You may have your soul, but there’s still blood on your hands. Blood that wouldn’t have been there without it.”

He looked away, wounded. A few people fidgeted; there were one or two whispers that went around the room.

Naturally, Buffy didn’t let them distract her. “You’re gonna have to kill again, Spike,” she finished, her voice still harsh. “That part of you, you’d better find it.”

“Everything I do is for you,” Spike told her, the words dark and unashamed. It was private, this bitterness – the intimacy of it. Looking at her again, Spike’s expression burned with every moment that they’d spent together and if Buffy had been weaker, less tired, she would have been embarrassed to have everybody see it. Possibly that was Spike’s intention. It still didn’t work. “Every nasty little thing you see in me… It’s for you – it’s for loving you – I try to wipe it clean.”

“It’s not enough,” was Buffy’s answer to that, just like the First Slayer had told her.

There were definitely some sounds of indignation from the audience then. Buffy didn’t listen to them, though, not until Spike proved her point and surrendered. He glanced around the room at all the gathered faces, then promptly he switched on a heel and stormed out of the house.

Really, Buffy didn’t figure he’d go far, but she was starting to shake. It wasn’t like she wanted him gone; it wasn’t like she wanted to hurt him. As many of them as possible, they all had to get through this, and right now it felt like she was the only one who saw it.

Keeping herself together, Buffy turned herself abruptly to the only person in the house she knew might get through to Spike. Who might find it to be gentler to him. “Dawn,” she commanded, zeroing in on her sister.

Dawn got it, just the way she’d clearly got a hell of a lot more of that conversation than the rest of the room. “Oh no, Buffy,” she said, eyes wide and shaking her head, apparently not ready to forgive or even move on. “Not me. I don’t…”

Clearly Dawn didn’t want to, but it wasn’t complete disgust she had on her face. After all, she was a Summers, so Buffy hoped she might figure out what Buffy long had, that at some point they would all get over what had happened in this house, and so they might as well do it quicker. “Get him back,” was all Buffy said to her sister, not quite ready to have that part discussed in public. She turned away as the girl began to leave, stormy-faced but obedient. “Lydia!” Buffy then picked on the other person she needed. “Get the book. I think we’re calling this an emergency.”

It should have been easy. These were Watchers; they watched. Surprisingly, though, Lydia looked pissed, like the last thing any Slayer should do was try and talk a vampire into playing hardball. “Nigel is the better linguist, I think,” was what she said, waspishly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Buffy rolled her eyes, suppressing the fear that she was losing the game she’d started tonight. As it was, this chick might have written the book on Spike, but she really knew nothing. “Fine,” she exclaimed, turning to the other Watcher, who just looked like he wished he could be inconspicuous in this sea of people. Buffy could work with that. “Nigel!” she commanded him. “You’re up.”

.


	2. free association II

\-- _afterwards_ \--

Outside on the back porch, reliable as the setting sun, Spike was waiting for her. Or, if not waiting, he was smoking, sitting on the steps and staring off into the yard.

When he said nothing, Buffy took that as an invitation, the way he'd done so many times before. She eased herself down onto the step, a few inches away but close enough to feel a tingle from the nearness, no matter that she didn’t deserve it.

Drawing her arms around herself, Buffy groaned to feel her bones relax. After a moment, Spike seemed to decide on something: he made a sound like he was going to start talking, then stopped, then finally went through with it. “Is that what happened?” he asked her.

Buffy looked at him. The moonlight made his leather gleam in sharp shadows and highlights. When he spoke he smelled like Marlboros, which was nasty, and yet somehow also the exact antidote to the familiar school smell of chewing gum and BO, lately smellable around her house.

Steadily, Spike repeated the question. “Is that what they did to you?”

In the end, she didn’t bother to act like she didn’t know what he was talking about. Spike had listened to the story about the Shadowmen just as well as the rest of them. Of course, it had only been after Buffy had told the tale that she'd remembered how many sets of chains existed between her and Spike, but she could recognise the similarity now. It was easy to construct a damning narrative thread between the various agents involved and, naturally, Spike was doing that now.

“It wasn’t the same,” Buffy dismissed the line from her own head, looking up to the empty sky.

He’d walked away from her, inside – all over again. This time, though, it was different. Now that Buffy had tracked him down, Spike wasn’t holding back. He snorted; his jacket creaked as he looked at her. Then he was spoke, dark and serious and direct: “Bollocks it wasn’t.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, but part of her was suppressing a smile. It felt good to have him back, this Spike she remembered.

Not looking for an argument right now, though, Buffy said nothing. She just attuned her ears into the night.

Obviously, Spike didn’t let it go. “I was gonna rip you to shreds, you know? For what you did.” He said it nonchalantly, dragging on his smoke again after he’d finished. Buffy couldn’t help watching him, not now. “First for what you said,” her guy explained. “Then for going off like that on your own.” He had a good rant stored up inside him, it was clear. “No preparation, no weapons, no nothing,” he almost started on it. “It was a risk and you know it.”

“It seemed worthwhile,” was all that Buffy could think to say. Spike side-eyed her, but that really was all she had. She shrugged, a small smile on her face.

Looking like he didn’t expect anything less, Spike nodded. “Yeah, well,” he added, his coat creaking as he leant an elbow on his knee. “You’re lucky I don't much have the energy to get into all of this. Even if I’m sure you’d prefer I put on a show.”

Now _that_ comment frustrated her. Sending her glare off into the yard, Buffy grit her jaw and told him, “I don’t want you to put on a _show_. That’s not what I said.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard what you said,” Spike replied easily, sarcastically. “But that’s all it ever was, the Big Bad you remember: one pathetic, needy bastard, grasping at more than he’s been given, sometimes with a decent hairdo.” He sighed, and when Buffy looked back he was flicking ash towards the grass. “Never fear,” he added, “your message got through. You need me and you need Willow at the top of our game and we haven’t been there. I get it.” For a moment he glanced at her, and Buffy knew he was recalling some of their worse shared experiences. “Just hoped I might also make something better of myself. Actually see something changed.”

There was so much that Buffy wanted to say to that, she wasn’t sure how to get it into the right order. To hear Spike say he understood, it was amazing – it was more than she would have hoped for. At the same time, it hurt her in a particularly wriggly part of her gut when he talked himself down, no matter how much practice she had at ignoring it.

“I…” she began, still uncertain what to go with. She reached out a hand – but Spike jumped when she touched his fingers.

It was almost as if she was imaging it, but when Spike covered he covered too far, pulling away and climbing up to his feet. It was exactly like he was nervous, as he took a last drag of his cigarette and then dumped the end into the soil of a dead pot plant.

Buffy was surprised to see it all happen, and a little bit annoyed. “It wasn’t the same,” she repeated, leaning on her right arm as she turned back. Maybe, she thought, she could diagnose his jumpiness. “What they did, it shouldn’t get to you.”

Spike looked like he was planning to go back inside, but was caught between her and the door.

Forcing his decision, Buffy clambered to her own feet, an ache in her arches and a slight chafing burn just underneath her knees. This was what happened when she wore new boots all day, in soil and then in sand. The heels were a little high and the tops of them were a little loose; she only had herself to blame.

“They had no idea who I was and they didn’t care,” Buffy tried to explain, distracting herself back to Spike. “That girl,” she said seriously, looking into his fearful eyes, “when they took her, she was a _tool_. She was something they could use to make their lives easier.”

Clearly, he didn’t get it. Buffy knew, as well as anyone could, that there were hundreds of other girls for whom Spike had been a nightmare, so probably he was right not to figure it out. Even Buffy didn’t pretend she had it completely.

“When they took her,” Buffy tried to work it through, all the same, “they’d planned it all out.” That girl who became the Slayer, she’d had no idea what was coming, just the same as she knew those men never cared who she was or who she would fight, who she would be once they’d cast her out into the night all alone. The thought was dark and heavy in her stomach, “She was nothing to them.”

The decking creaked as she took a step forward, as Spike shuffled his feet. Once Xander had said something about rotting joists, but Buffy had planned to ignore it until it became an issue. Most likely a demon would be thrown through the porch before Mother Nature had her chance to destroy everything.

“That was their plan,” Buffy continued to explain, not letting herself lose this thought, even if she did glance down. “With you and me,” she told Spike at last, “yours has always been something else. I… I don’t want you to think of yourself like them.”

Looking back at her, some of the tension in Spike’s body seemed to release itself into the air. What he’d seen in her, Buffy didn’t know, but it was a relief when he put his hands in his pockets, like he had no intention to go back inside just yet. “Shouldn’t worry about me, love,” was what he said, a crease in his forehead because he clearly hadn’t conceded her point.

“I can’t help it,” Buffy replied, drawing her arms around herself again. She didn’t admit that she did worry about him, not precisely, so she figured she could say it. “You and Willow…” she added, looking away. “I know you can’t control guilt, but sometimes I worry that it’s gonna get you killed. It’s gonna take you like some disease.” OK, so maybe she was going to spell it out. “This apocalypse is so much – _more_ than anything we’ve had before, and it’s like that every year, but we’ve all got to step up and I don’t know how…”

“See, if you’d have put it like that, I wouldn’t have been so bloody angry with you.” When Buffy looked up, Spike was smiling. He took a step towards her, at which point they really weren’t very far apart. “Look,” he continued, like her fear made him as sick as it did Buffy, “Willow’ll pull through when she needs to. Thing about Red,” he suggested, doing that thing that Buffy now realised had always been suggestion, but sounded like he was revealing the truth, “she’s as righteous as you are.” His expression turned serious. “The whole lot of you, you’re ruthless. Yeah, she might’ve spooked herself; might be feeling like she wants to play the mouse for a bit – and taken up with Puss in Boots to prove it… But if you set her off she’ll be all right. She’ll pull through.”

Buffy wished she could believe it. She looked at Spike, realising after a few moments that he actually did. Could it be possible? “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that,” she muttered, turning away with the admission.

Everything she’d heard from Giles and Willow herself had made her question whether Willow really was ready to be back here, on the Hellmouth. They had Althanea now, of course, but from what Buffy could tell she was more about the healing than the battle magic Will actually excelled in. Everything everyone was saying, it was all about how they couldn’t rush Willow back into things, but Buffy felt rushed. She felt really rushed.

It must have shown on her face or something, because Spike creaked a little closer towards her. Buffy rolled her shoulders back, planning to summon some sort of smile, but not quite expecting it when his fingers grazed her forearms.

Clearly he was over whatever had startled him before. Buffy was pretty startled herself, but her hands still fell into the crooks of Spike’s arms; his coming to rest just underneath her elbows. She shivered, realising that this was the closest thing to a hug she’d had in longer than she could remember.

Was that pathetic, or just a sign of what she’d become? Buffy couldn’t be sure. Whatever it was, it made her feel warm, and it was enough support to lean on, for the moment.

Somewhere out in the darkness a nightjar trilled, flittering its way out of a tree. Buffy wondered if it was an omen. Yet leather was crumpling between her fingers and she held her grip. “I don’t want to be nothing, Spike,” she admitted in a whisper, looking at his face just below his eye line. “The way they look at me…” It wasn’t anything like the way they looked at Willow.

“Don’t be daft,” was what Spike replied, drawing in a little. He touched his nose into her hair and Buffy tried to remember if or else when they’d ever been close like this. She couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t have happened.

Honestly, she wanted to say something, to keep the moment from becoming awkward. The thing was, she couldn’t think of anything to say. For her at least it was enough, too good actually, to simply stop for a moment, feel Spike’s coat crumple in her fingers as she clutched his arms tighter. Unsteadily, his chest rose and sank as he breathed, surely not letting her be as her skin tingled with his nearness, but his fingers to her elbows otherwise still gentle.

There was a moment when Buffy thought she’d stopped thinking, about the Potentials, about the First, about what it would take to get them through this. But it wasn’t quite to be. Urgency flicked through Spike like the toll of an absent bell, and in a second that stole her breath he squeezed her closer: the touch became a grip of his left hand, his other glanced on her shoulder and as her eyes fell shut he kissed her on the crown of her head – quickly, like some sort of secret blessing.

Afterwards, he muttered gruffly, “Company’s coming.” It wasn’t an explanation and the vowels barely got a look in, but it was a command to pull away. Spike looked at her meaningfully as he rocked back on his heels, rustling through pockets and coming up with cigarettes.

Alert now, Buffy turned, and sure enough she could see through the back door’s glass how Quentin Travers made his way through her kitchen. It was so bright in there and so dark outside that she knew there was little risk of him seeing her. As it was, he looked up right at her, but his eyes glazed away like he’d only seen his own face in a mirror.

Still, she prepared herself, so when he made it outside she was ready. Spike was at a distance, surly and watchful; Buffy herself was impeccable, serene and unthreatened, unembarrassed.

The back door swung open in a steady, quiet squeak. “Miss Summers,” Travers addressed her as he came outside, face as clean as hers like this was all any of them should be. “We should talk.”

There didn’t seem any reason to say no.

\-- _earlier_ \--

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” Willow was asking, a few days after her date with Wood. The conversation she’d had with Spike. “You know, to get so close?”

Caught up in her thoughts, Buffy took the question seriously. _Well, I guess he’s still a vampire, but these days he mostly acts… Wait._ “Huh?” she asked, not sure whether Willow was reading her mind again. They hadn’t been talking about Spike, had they?

Sitting at the dining room table, both Willow and Althanea looked at her like she was crazy. They were both drinking tea. Buffy had declined, but she at least remembered what they were talking about now: wards for the house, to keep out the First Evil. It had been Althanea’s idea, and she’d called Willow and Buffy together so that they could talk about it. “I mean,” Buffy tried to recover, wishing she had something to do with her fidgeting fingers, “why would it be dangerous?”

Willow looked down, just for a moment, her straightened hair covering the sides of her face. It was as though Buffy had accused her of something, but for herself she had no idea what she’d said that was so bad. Honestly, Buffy got that Willow was afraid of using magic around the First, that she was afraid of the evil. She didn’t want this thing anywhere near any of them. After Willow and Andrew’s adventures with Radio Shack, though, Buffy was getting a little impatient about this idea they had any other option.

“No, Willow is right,” Althanea said, like she could read Buffy’s thoughts. She was nursing her tea, rings and bracelets jangling against her mug. Buffy looked at her suspiciously. “All magic crafts a connection between its caster and its object,” the witch continued, in tones as though she had often repeated this. She had grey eyes and they were serious. “To cast a snare around the house will be no problem, but should we capture the First Evil that will allow a connection to us.”

“Right.” Buffy figured it was the same deal as before, when Willow had tried the locator spell on the First. Possible possession; major suckiness. “Got it,” Buffy accepted. Again she drummed her fingers on the table, glancing at all of Willow’s computer stuff, living once more at the other end just like when she’d been dead.

It was difficult for Buffy to sympathise with Willow’s fear, really. The First could take on her face any time it wanted; they were already connected.

“Would it work?” she asked anyway, thinking back to the wards. It seemed necessary to know.

Ultimately, they were all in this fight together. That was how Buffy saw it. She’d been thinking about Spike because she’d spent most of the day with Robin, dealing with troublemakers at school. The after-date awkwardness was mostly over now, and he hadn’t asked her out again, but he was coming by tomorrow to take a look at their operation. Buffy wanted to show him something functional, that she could be proud of, professionally.

Right now she wasn’t sure she had much of anything.

“We could make it work,” Willow said when Buffy looked back to her. Her expression was a little lacking in conviction, round eyes asking rather than telling Buffy to believe her. “I mean, it would be huge, right?” Willow continued, looking between Buffy and Althanea. “If we could keep the First out of the house?”

Buffy did not say, _Duh,_ to her friends, especially not seriously. “Go for it,” she confirmed, pulling herself from the conversation before she could. With a smile she knew would come across as distracted – no matter how hard she tried – Buffy rose from the table. “I’m gonna go check on the girls,” she told Willow, hoping to sound like she had faith.

From Willow’s shuttered grin, it didn’t seem like it was much help.

\-- _earlier_ \--

Seriously, she spent too much time underground these days. That was the main thing Buffy thought. First it was the high school basement, and then after taking in Spike it had been her own. Now they were here in the Initiative and it felt almost the same. The cold, musty air pressed into her clothes, getting into her bones the way she used to let the sunshine.

Most of the time, it didn’t bother her, this feeling. Here on her own, it felt an awful lot like despair.

After a few moments of trying to get Spike to wake up again, Buffy had lost pretty much all the energy she had left. Uncomfortable with her back to the dark, she’d settled at Spike’s side, first turned towards him and now simply facing the same way, back to the wall and with his unconscious head resting on her shoulder. It was all very final.

They needed a plan, really. _She_ needed a plan, for both of them. Thing was, Buffy wasn’t entirely sure she had one. To get out of this immediate situation, at least, Buffy knew she could put Spike over her shoulder and haul him back to the surface. It might tire her out to get him all the way home, but they weren’t completely stuck.

What would they do if they left, though? That was the question. She was no expert, but if the chip was degrading then it seemed to Buffy that it couldn’t keep firing forever. It was possible that Spike would simply sleep out the rest of the shocks, wake up and eventually recover. If they got back home, Buffy figured she could ask Willow to dope Spike up, maybe do something to protect his brain… But it wasn’t entirely clear whether Willow would say yes, as freaked about magic as she’d been recently.

As Spike shivered slightly, in his torpor, Buffy felt it like a cold wash running through her. The chip was still torturing its victim; that much was obvious. It was a reason to get out, to get on with the next possible solution, but now they’d come all the way here, she couldn’t help but think there might be something to help Spike down in this complex.

So, holding Spike’s hand gently in her own, Buffy waited, thinking.

God, she wished he would wake up.

When it came by, eventually, hope had a rather visible appearance. Buffy felt something tickle at her nose that itched like magic – then, in the next second, a warm glow as coming around the corner. It heralded the way for a fuzzy, tiny Tinkerbell of light.

It was like a spell Buffy vaguely recognised as Willow’s, the little helper golf ball of glow that let her find people. The way Buffy remembered it, however, was as a darting green light, buzzing around like a wasp. This was more like a butterfly, rose-pink and making its way gently through the air to settle in front of them. It made Buffy’s whole face tingle, and the urge to sneeze eventually fading away, leaving her with a tight feeling of anticipation, right in her chest.

Gently, Buffy eased away from Spike and made towards the thing, keen to work out what it wanted her to do, if it wanted her to follow it. It seemed – helpful, somehow.

Nonetheless, the firefly was content to wait, closing in to hover just above their heads. In its gentle, warm light, Buffy thought the pain on Spike’s face seemed to ease, his sleep a little more content.

Some part of him could still be conscious, she guessed. Really, Buffy didn’t want that to be the case, because then she really was wasting time with him in pain. As she began rising to her feet, however, she apparently pissed the spell off: it began flitting in agitated angles that were more like Buffy remembered.

Doing as she was told, because at least this thing didn’t seem evil, Buffy stayed sat down, drawing her knees towards Spike again, wondering if she was warm. Calmer now, the Tinkerbell bounced closer, coming to rest on the other side of Spike, just above his shoulder.

Buffy watched it suspiciously, one foot fidgeting in her boot as she suddenly found herself ready again for action. She didn’t trust magic, but she knew that sometimes she needed it.

\-- _later_ \--

The silence was long after Dawn’s accusation. _You bought it, that feeling._ Spike didn’t know what to say. _You bought it._ It seemed like Dawn wasn’t all that interested in going back inside the house, not to Buffy’s particularly brutal confab, but Spike wasn’t keen on the idea either. Certainly no more keen than he was on this.

As time went on, he was almost ready to try again. The second fag had been smoked and put out on the sole of his boot his time, the end of it in his pocket like the other. “I dunno what to say to you,” he went with, because it was all he had. “I…”

“Just forget about it,” Dawn replied, though she clearly didn’t mean it.

And Spike was going to get into it with her, have a real good go about it, but at that moment there was a huge blast of blue-white light that came pouring out of the living room window.

Heaven knew what the neighbours thought about moments like this. Spike, when he didn’t know what was going on, had a tendency to feel blind panic. Dawn, who had the same phobia of portals as he did, she clearly felt the same: they caught each other’s eyes and as one went rushing back to the front door.

Dawn had no superstrength, but she was more than a match for the front door, not quite shut. Spike rushed through after her, taking in the blinding, vanishing flash of what was definitely a portal and feeling it like storm pressure on his bones.

“What the bloody hell is going on here?” he yelled, looking for Buffy and feeling his heart drop out of him when she was nowhere to be seen. Surging forward, he’d almost got his eyes settled on Willow – the next person he was looking for – when in the place of the bright spots burnt on his retina there suddenly appeared a massive, hulking form of some particularly grim and toothy-looking demon.

Everyone started screaming. Girls who’d been lounging around and pretending like they could never be the Slayer someday, they were up on their feet and running for the stairs. Spike cast a glance behind him, where Dawn was staring, transfixed. Then, in a second, her eyes were snapped to his and she was off, darting in the direction of the weapons chest. Because some people in this house were useful.

Spike went in the other direction, glancing right as the girl went left. The demon was going through the ritual of all those semi-sentient creatures lost in a new world: roaring at the ceiling and raising its meaty arms while it decided who was going to die first. “Willow!” Spike shouted on the way, because he still wanted some intelligence and the whole point was to distract this thing’s attention.

“Buffy!” was what Red shouted back, because apparently she thought the best idea was to have all his borrowed blood to freeze in his veins. It did so, the very moment he was to find himself in a fight. “It’s an exchange for Buffy!”

Spike had already hurled himself at the demon by this point, of course. What he didn’t know, because no one apparently would tell him, was whether or not he was allowed to kill this thing. Usually it didn’t matter, but usually no one messed around with magic this bloody ridiculous, so who was he to make guesses?

It was a solid thing, the monster, its skin hard like crocodile leather and brown like the deep. Spike couldn’t really get a purchase on it. The ring of steel from somewhere made it sound like Dawn had got her way into the weapons, but Spike’s vision was filled by hair and musk.

 _Buffy?_ Spike thought as he clung on, gathering his thoughts. Why the hell was Buffy missing? What the hell had she done? What the hell had she taken on?

The demon crouched, and Spike figured that would have been a moment for him to have been thrown through the ceiling, if at that moment a misaimed crossbow bolt hadn’t struck him right in the side and made all of his muscles spasm into freedom.

“Oh! No! I’m sorry!” It wasn’t Dawn; it was the girly bloody Watcher. God help him.

Thankfully, as Spike landed behind the demon, the thing was distracted. It stumbled, angry to lose its quarry halfway through its throw, and it roared again. Spike made to barrel at the thing’s legs – but it was faster than him, crashing its way across the wooden floor and right through the coffee table.

“Dawn!” Spike shouted, reaching out an arm and staggering forward in the direction that he’d come in. He raised his eyes, a little worried about what he’d see.

A sight for sore, if terrified eyes, Dawn had an axe in front of her, the blade bigger than her head. Rather than swing it like an idiot, either, she had it held defensively, the haft a shield for her neck and chest, ten inches of steel for anything that would come at her face. The demon was feet away, then closer, but Dawn was turning like a weathervane to follow its movements.

Rather than suss out this threat, the demon took the easy road and galumphed right past it, off through the open door. Spike felt a full chest of air flood out of him as he dragged himself to where the demon had been moments before. He started yanking the crossbow bolt from his side, eyes on Dawn, who was shaking, and his free hand didn’t quite hold back from her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked her, his pain some distant problem for something else.

Lowering her blade, Dawn shared with him a guarded, shaky smile. “Yeah.”

Spike smiled back, tightly – then grimaced as he finally tore the bolt free.

“We need to go after it,” suddenly his assailant was by their sides, looking flushed in her comfy gear and her eyes all beady through her glasses. Lydia – that was her name.

Spike stared at her, figured Dawn was staring too. Orders were being shouted behind this woman: something to do with magic, something to do with portals, something to do with managing the panic still thrumming around the room. People kept crunching into the broken furniture.

Yet the Watcher bird seemed oblivious, holding her crossbow like she should be trusted with it. “Come on!” she said, her chin all high and mighty, her hair all wispy. She was too tall to pull off the look, as far as Spike was concerned. “It’s getting away!”

“Right!” Suddenly Dawn was agreeing, and when Spike looked back at her she was holding her axe up like she too had a clue what she was doing with it.

“Jesus,” Spike swore, glancing down to the floor and then up to the ceiling that was thankfully unbroken by his fragile body. This was a nightmare. “The pair of you _stay here_ ,” he yelled at both of them, avoiding Dawn’s axe as he skipped around them and retreating to the front door, backwards.

It was on them, it seemed. Buffy had left it on them, and they were all a bunch of wannabes. The fucking Slayer was giving them a test. She’d gambled with her own life to test them.

“Willow!” he called back to the other crowd, incandescent with rage. The witch was consulting with Nigel and Wood while that Potential yipped by her side, the one she was shagging. Still, Willow looked at him and Spike put everything he had into commanding her, “Just do what you need to do, right?” Her eyes were wide like saucers. Spike didn’t wait. “You _do_ it!” he yelled as he left.

He was saving his real ire for the martyr who deserved it, he thought. God, if she ever came back.

\-- _earlier_ \--

The night before, the First Slayer told Buffy what she already knew. It wasn’t enough, any of it, what they were doing. And that was a warning, Buffy realised even at the time, but she didn’t know for what. She was harsh with the girls when Principal Wood came around – and they all grumbled about it. Lydia didn’t seem impressed, like she wanted to tell her off, the way she’d told Kennedy off the day before. The Watcher said nothing, though, just crossed her arms and looked stony-faced.

Buffy didn’t much give a damn. She didn’t understand it, either, when Spike was pissed off to find out that she’d told the Principal about his soul. He looked at her like she’d betrayed him and Buffy was annoyed to find herself annoyed with him. She couldn't figure out if this new introverted streak he had was a part of who he’d always been or an affectation he’d taken on so as to make the soul visible. From the way his eyes burned in the basement, at Robin and at her before he remembered himself, Buffy figured it might be the latter.

He said nothing, of course, because if there was one thing Spike didn’t do anymore, it was cause friction between the pair of them. It was going to have to be her, like everything else.

At the end of the tour, Robin officially revealed the Emergency Kit he’d brought. Everyone who was interested was in the living room. To Buffy, it seemed like a good moment for a pep talk before dinner, or else an opportunity to let them know how much better they needed to be.

Apparently, however, the idea that Wood had had the kit all the time he was in America was a scandal to Watchers everywhere, so he and Nigel were pre-empting Buffy with an argument.

“I don’t care if Bernard Crowley gave it to you,” the Brit was exclaiming. “It wasn’t his to give! This is the thing about field Watchers…”

Rolling her eyes, Buffy had half a mind to leave them to it. She glanced at Dawn, who at least had been through the bag ever since it had come home from school.

“I’m sorry; do I need to explain myself to you?” Robin was using the tone that made pretty much every kid in the school shut up. “I had _nothing_ of hers. Crowley understood…”

Getting Buffy’s question, Dawn shrugged as if to say there wasn’t much for them to be interested in. _Book,_ she mouthed, opening her hands like she couldn’t figure out how to pray. _And a box,_ she added, cupping her hands to open them again. 

Buffy nodded, figuring that now was the time she would kill this particular confrontation.

And yet, she didn’t get the chance. Before she could even speak, there was a bloodcurdling scream that came from upstairs.

Everyone stopped. The fastest on her feet and pretty much the only one without fear in her eyes, Buffy was first up the stairs and the first past Amanda and the other Potentials to find Chloe ( _Chloe,_ she remembered now, that was her name), hanged from the ceiling by a freshly laundered bedsheet. She’d gone blue and was clearly, irredeemably, dead.

 _How did she even…?_ Still processing the shock of it, Buffy followed the bedsheet along the contraption Chloe had made, the bedsheet tied to a Swiffer mop she’d somehow lashed to rest on top of a wardrobe door.

It was grotesque. It was the sort of thing an unfocused fifteen year old in throes of suicidal thoughts should have had difficulty pulling off on her own. The Slayer’s call was to get things done, Buffy knew that, but this seemed too much like Chloe had had some sort of encouragement.

“Amanda!” Buffy commanded, not looking away. Behind her, the girls startled. “One of you!” she offered an alternative. “Get a knife. We need to bring her down.” No way was Buffy going to start playing with all the knots. She was angry, she realised that was what she was feeling, but she was still going to give the girl some dignity now that she’d gone.

_“Gosh, Buffy, it’s almost like you care about me.”_

There was a voice in her head, just behind her ear. It was Chloe’s voice. Buffy knew she wouldn’t have been able to recall it if anyone had asked, but now she heard it, she knew it. It was quiet, suggestive, insinuating. It was the First Evil.

 _“I guess you thought you could keep me out, huh?”_ it continued.

Buffy turned around, trying to find the source of the whispers. This time, however, it seemed that the First had no body, no visible presence. From the looks on the girls’ faces, some staring at Chloe, some crying and some turned away – from everyone’s faces Buffy knew she was the only one who could hear what it was saying.

 _“I can feel it, your witches’ spell. I can feel them.”_ A short, girlish laugh made Buffy’s ear tingle. _“You’re trying to keep me out and it’s cute, you know. The effort. Thing is, I have so many ways to hurt you.”_

Buffy scowled, even as Amanda presented her with a hunting knife. “What? Is it not the right one?” she asked as Buffy took it, absently.

_“Poor Chloe heard everything you ever said, and she still figured I was the one to listen to. What does that say?”_

“No, Amanda,” Buffy addressed the girl, meeting her eyes as she tried to reassure her. “It’s fine.”

 _ **“I can’t keep them alive.”**_ It was her own voice Buffy heard this time, louder and clearer and saying exactly what she’d said to Travers on the porch the day before. Amanda jumped, staring at her. They all stared at her. _**“Not all of them,”**_ the voice continued as they started to look around, between each other. _**“Some of them will die in this fight.”**_

Amanda, not least of all the girls there, she pulled back like she’d been stung. Something in her dark eyes suggested how she’d figured it out, that the voice was both a lie and that it wasn’t. As far as she was concerned, Buffy had betrayed them.

The wards had failed. That was what Buffy knew. Turning back to her task, the knife heavy in her hand, that was the thing she concentrated on as she felt the heat of everyone’s gaze.

.


	3. free association III

\-- _afterwards_ \--

Spike went inside, to free up the porch as Buffy’s meeting room. If the shock of touching her was anything like the shock of touching him, Buffy expected he’d retreat down into the basement and take at least half an hour to think about it on his own. That was what she wanted, after all, even if she wasn’t going to get the opportunity.

With her forehead still tingling, Buffy was forced to concentrate on the image of Quentin Travers, rumpled and old and with his arm in a sling. There seemed to be less energy in him now than there had been the other day, though Buffy couldn’t quite figure out why. “Mr. Travers,” she said, putting her hands on her waist and tucking her elbows forwards. She didn’t have any reason to feel intimidated, so she wasn’t going to be. “What d’you wanna talk to me about?”

“I heard there was a scene,” Travers said, inscrutably, “after your return from the vision quest.” He looked like he could use some sleep, really: his face was drawn and pale, not so different a colour from his hair. “I’m afraid Thea’s potions have a rather unfortunate effect on me,” he added, his broken arm prominent across his unseasonable wool vest. “I’d already put it back when the commotion started and couldn’t keep awake. I was terribly sorry to hear about young Chloe.”

He was in his sixties, Travers, if Buffy had his age figured out right. Giles always talked as if he was in the generation above him, but not quite old enough to be his father’s colleague rather than his own. Not that Buffy really knew much about Giles’ dad; Giles never much mentioned him. In any case, this ex-head of the Council wasn’t ancient, but it was possible that on a multiple fracture he should still have been asleep.

Nevertheless, he was here, and Buffy didn’t figure it was her job to explain things to him. “Yeah, well,” she said, the darkness feeling rather mundane behind her now. “It’s been a long evening.”

“Yes,” Travers agreed.

Buffy glanced towards the light inside the house, trying to think if there was an excuse she had to abandon this particular conversation. Clearly Travers hadn’t yet said what he wanted to say, because he was still standing there, but Buffy wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. She had things to think about, about Spike and about herself, about her and Spike, about all of this.

Eventually, Travers went on. Buffy braced herself, focusing. “You must forgive Lydia,” he said, as though he was attempting to placate her. Buffy raised an eyebrow. “She is a very caring young woman and an asset to the… Well,” he recovered himself. “The Potentials are all very fond of her and she is very fond of them.”

For some reason, it sounded as though there was a _but_ coming her way, so Buffy waited.

Right on time, it arrived. “But she has rarely found herself in a position where she must make difficult decisions.”

Still waiting for Travers to finish, Buffy wondered if she shouldn’t feel offended on Lydia’s behalf. A place like the Council, she would have been surprised if Lydia Chalmers had found herself even near the opportunity of getting to make the decisions. She was pretty much the only woman Buffy had ever seen wearing Watcher tweed, apart from that crazy power-hungry cliché bitch years ago, who had _not_ helped them keep Faith on the wagon.

Just because Buffy was coming to think she didn’t much like Lydia, it didn’t mean she had to think she was useless.

Of course, Travers probably didn’t think he did either. “No, she is quite brilliant,” he added, as if Buffy had been holding up her side of the conversation. “She wants all the girls to survive,” he continued, with a sigh as if to say they would all love such an eventuality. The awful thing was that Buffy knew the feeling. “I fear, though, that she might be rather encouraging the opposite eventuality. She’s giving them hope, which is only encouraging this… Insubordination.”

Buffy bristled, not sure what at, initially. Then she realised it was the idea she wasn’t giving the girls hope. She wanted them to have hope, just as much as she figured Chalmers did; it sounded like all they disagreed about was the best way to make them have it. Buffy didn’t want them to hope that someone would come to save them, because they would have to save themselves, always. Possibly that wasn’t what came across. Lydia probably had more practice.

Clearly, though, Travers thought he had a solution, and he wouldn’t go until he’d explained it to her. With a glance to the sky, Buffy asked him, “What do you suggest?”

Travers looked at her seriously, as though he had in fact been fighting evil for longer than Buffy had been alive. “Ah,” he said, as though he’d been waiting for precisely this question. “Well,” he continued, raising his good hand to offer her the suggestion, “Thea mentioned that her wards against the Evil were not to keep this presence from this house entirely, but this seems it must be the right idea nonetheless: to reduce its influence, from here if not this dimension.”

Buffy tried to keep the look of _duh_ from her face, because she assumed Travers had a point. The guy was old, so presumably he would make it eventually.

Holding her gaze as though there was a point she was missing, Travers let the pause hang before he went on, “There is magic that can do this. Pure, holy magic.” He kept talking, as though Buffy actually had an idea of what he was talking about. She tried to look like she understood. “You understand that humans cannot typically access it, but such magic may be the very thing.” Another pause, for emphasis. “I’m talking about an _incantatio dracontea_.”

Really, Buffy tried, she did. Unfortunately, on this night, on that porch, all she could say was, “Huh?”

\-- _earlier_ \--

It only took a couple of minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. The Initiative complex remained dark and lonely, even with this new buzzing light. Buffy held herself together, conserving all the fight she had left in her until she heard the sound of people, several rooms away, walking and breathing and talking amongst themselves. The Tinkerbell light hummed like a dog waiting on the doormat.

“We’re almost at the charm now,” one of the voices promised. “I assure you.” It was a woman’s voice, maybe British.

“Have I ever doubted your abilities?” came the reply. It was a man’s, definitely British. It was – familiar?

Another. “What concerns me is why the Slayer would…”

Buffy ignored the rest of that sentence as her mind caught up with her ears. She turned towards the sound, unable to believe it as the footsteps came around the corner and the group – bathed in rosy, mystical light – appeared in the heart of the gloom. It turned out her memory wasn’t wrong.

“Quentin _Travers_?” Buffy said, still not entirely certain that she wasn’t hallucinating.

“Ah,” the man himself said. He stood there with a small team, one younger man and one younger woman, whom Buffy vaguely recalled from the last time the Watchers had been in town. They were joined by one equally grey-haired witch. Buffy assumed she was a witch, the one who had spoken before. She was raising a hand now to recall the Tinkerbell light. “Oh dear,” Travers continued, taking in the sight of her and a rather bloody Spike. “Perhaps we should have let the General come after all,” he commented to the rest of the group.

“Giles said you’d gotten blown up!” Buffy exclaimed, before she’d taken that comment in. Clumsily, she climbed to her feet, resting Spike’s head back against the wall.

“Well, yes,” Travers eventually replied. Even in the pink light, he looked like someone who had, actually, been blown up. His right arm, Buffy realised now, was in a sling, and there was a wound still healing on his forehead, a bruise and an old scab that went into his hairline. The other Watchers, if that was who they were, they looked the same: haggard and healing. Their clothes weren’t nearly as starched as Buffy would have expected, and instead of tweed Travers at least was dressed in dark corduroy pants and a pilling grey-green sweater.

“Wait,” Buffy interrupted that particular observation, shaking her head to clear it. She crossed her arms, catching up with what this man had just said. “What do you mean ‘the General’?”

The group looked among themselves, as though there was a long story there. “Your American army,” Travers explained. “They were kind enough to get us into the country as secretly as we required. After their attempt to sabotage the Council’s mission, well…”

“We wanted to make ourselves useful to you,” the younger woman Watcher added, from Travers’ side, before coughing, daintily and then with one unbecomingly deep intake of breath. “But there was a certain amount,” she wheezed, “of convalescence…”

“Then we heard you had called for aid,” Travers picked up the narrative, as the younger man, as yet silent, thumped the woman on the back. “And Althanea suggested we might make this better our moment to intervene.”

Buffy looked at the witch again. If this was really Willow’s hero, then maybe she could make herself useful and get their Rosenberg back on track.

Catching her eye, the older woman smiled. Buffy, however, wasn’t feeling the friendly greeting. She couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the Initiative _had_ come, if they’d been able to navigate the warren of the compound any quicker.

She glanced back towards Spike, reaching out a hand; her fingers grazed his hair, but he still looked pained. “What can you do for him?” she asked directly, eyeing the group again. Right now, dealing with Willow wasn’t her biggest concern. Nor the cockroach-like survival of Travers and his gang, if there were any more of them left. Though she was already planning to be clumsy on the way out of here, just to check if any of them were the First.

“Why don’t we get him out of this gloomy place?” Althanea didn’t answer Buffy’s question, but then none of the others seemed particularly keen to acknowledge the unconscious elephant in the room.

It was frustrating. She didn’t know how to reply. Then, however, Althanea was extending a hand: before Buffy’s eyes, Spike began to rise out of his slump and was pulled upright, like a truly uncanny puppet onto strings.

His feet were eventually hovering an inch or two above the ground. All of him looked supported – and his head was raised above his shoulders like he still had his pride. In general, Buffy was almost willing to believe he might be OK. Even if he did look really weird. “I’ll do what I can for the pain,” Althanea continued, like this wasn’t a bother at all, “but hopefully we’ll be able to find a more permanent solution.”

“What?” Buffy asked, as Spike’s presence by her side made her shiver, even or especially with him unconscious. She caught Travers’ eye again, followed by the other two, the woman who she vaguely recalled had some weird, prurient interest in William the Bloody. “You’re gonna help him?”

No one denied it, or even looked particularly uncomfortable. Suppressing a shiver of cold, Buffy eyed all four of them yet again, waiting for the catch.

“Well,” the younger man Watcher finally spoke up. He was familiar too, even though right now he was wearing a turquoise sweatshirt with _CAMBRIDGE ETON FIVES_ stitched across the front like it was a 1980s baseball team. “He’s rather proved Lydia right, hasn’t he? About how unique he is?” The words took a moment for Buffy to compute. _Lydia…?_ She glanced at the young woman, now blushing. _Oh, right._ “The entire demonic underworld seems to think he’s a sign the end is nigh.” Still listening, Buffy tried to figure out why she felt jealous. Presumably it was because Lydia Nerdy Girl actually found somebody to listen to _her_ ideas about Spike. “It seems a shame to let them down, doesn’t it?” the man finished, as Buffy’s mind wandered towards resentment and inevitably worry – again.

“Hmm…” Buffy began, as she tried to gather her thoughts. However, she was cut off by the sound of something demonic a few rooms over – the sort of screech the last hour or so had made her dread. Changing tack, she said simply, “Let’s get out of here.” It seemed like the time to go.

\-- _later_ \--

Spike tried to keep calm, he really did. He tried to keep quiet. Mostly, he tried to quell the screams and the rage and the bitterness which crowded his head and his heart. Most of the time, he was pretty successful, but apparently all it took was for Buffy to go out with another man and it sent him straight into a tailspin.

He found himself stewing. That was the only word for it. All right, there were a few synonyms one could reach for, several of which had an association with souled vampires, but none of them were appropriate.

They’d had an argument – of course they’d had an argument – after the whole chip fiasco. Things had mostly gone back to normal and that was fine by him. Only now it turned out that one Buffy Summers had decided the weekend wouldn’t be complete unless she went out to dinner with the local high school principal. The whole thing put Spike in a stew, because it seemed unnecessary. It seemed pointed, really, aimed entirely at him and his wilful resistance of what Buffy wanted – like she was punishing him or something else grossly disproportionate.

That was unfair, he knew. And a little bit mad. It was the sort of thing Dru would have done and yet Spike couldn’t help it. She hadn’t even been discreet, Buffy, bubbling around all day like she hadn’t looked forward to anything so much in years, prancing around the corridors in her underthings, all frilly and undressed.

It wasn’t that Spike was scandalised, or even particularly turned on by the sight of her shoulders, any more than usual. Buffy had used to fight him in less, and he’d had enough wits to appreciate it even then. No, it was the idea of her dolling herself up for this other bloke, so soon after they’d had their brief disagreement, as if this was the solution. None of it sat right with him, and he’d been downstairs all day trying to figure it out.

_Oh, uh, Spike, d'you mind if maybe we make use of the space down here?_

Now, of course, he’d been kicked out of his basement in the name of some sort of plan involving radio equipment that Spike really didn’t give a toss about, so he couldn’t even stew in the tranquil darkness.

He was in the kitchen, this particular evening, sitting on the counter like a congealing pot of stew and reading Dawn’s _Othello_ while he tried to pretend the breakfast table wasn’t full of Watchers. As far as Spike could tell, waiting on the porch would look too much like he was waiting for Buffy to come home, and while he didn’t really care what people thought, he also did.

Giles was absent. Spike didn’t much care why.

It might almost have been a good evening, with some peace and quiet. He was getting to a good bit in his book. But then, “Where _is_ the Slayer, anyway?” twittery Lydia asked the group, interrupting some aimless chitchat about patrolling schedules.

Ears and eyes distracted traitors to the cause, Spike suppressed a groan as he immediately found himself listening in, watching the group from the corner of his eye.

It was the other youngish one, Nigel, who answered her. “On a _date_ , apparently.” He was pouring himself another cup of tea, because of course the four of them had found a teapot. Hadn’t asked if he fancied any, but then Spike supposed they were sworn enemies. “A principal at the school who may or may not have an alternative motive. Giles is not best pleased.” The man stirred in some milk, a smirk on his face. “I believe he’s sulking.”

“Is he indeed?” replied Travers, looking up from a newspaper as he took a slurp from Spike’s favourite mug. “I thought he was attempting to explain the meaning of ‘date’ in Cantonese…”

The line was delivered with the lightest of irony, and it was difficult for Spike not to crack a grin. He was slightly worried he was going to find this bloke entertaining if he kept listening, and Iago wasn’t all that distracting today.

Nigel _did_ laugh, but the two women seemed to have a little more decorum. “Well, darling,” Althanea chipped in with a dig of her own, “if you didn’t _fire_ all the linguists then he wouldn’t have to, would he?” She sipped daintily, as though the chipped Cancun mug in her hands was the finest willow-patterned china. “Whatever did happen to young Wesley?” she added, as if she knew exactly but was pretending not to. “I always liked him...”

“Have I not always said,” Travers immediately replied, like this was a tired argument, “that we’ll have him back once Roger… Well,” he cut into himself, surprised to find the music had changed, “ _if_ he retires,” he recovered, “ _and_ we ever find him again.” Trailing off, the man looked back down to his paper. “I don’t imagine we’ll hear anything from Khartoum for the foreseeable future.”

That thought seemed to make them all a bit glum. Looking down at them, Spike wondered if Buffy would have known what they were all on about. Also, because he couldn’t help it and had a one-track mind, he wondered if the prat she was on a date with had any idea what _she_ was on about. It was feasible she’d found the only person who did.

“Oh,” Althanea commented, interrupting Spike’s thoughts. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a pointless non-sequitur. “Did anyone take the car back?” she asked. “While you two were posturing,” she added to Travers, “I think I promised the General they could have it again by the end of the week.”

Travers didn’t seem to be answering. “I called someone to collect it,” Nigel told her, on another sip of tea. “It was a shame to see it go… It appears as though the Slayer has no other transportation at all.”

“Yes,” Lydia agreed, leaning on the countertop, she seemed a little frustrated with this turn in conversation. After a moment, she added, “But do we know who the Slayer’s with? There was a name being bandied about earlier that I thought I found vaguely familiar…”

The men looked at each other, as if there was no reason they should have paid attention. Althanea looked serene, and Spike almost figured she knew what he was going to say, that he couldn’t help it. “His name’s Robin Wood,” the words left his mouth, like they’d been perched there for the last four hours. “That’s his name.”

Althanea smiled. Spike meant to glare at her, but was distracted as all the watchers suddenly looked his way, shock on their faces. “Really?” Lydia said, raising her chin so she was looking at him straight down the bottle-bottoms of her glasses. “Are you quite certain?”

“It would be rather too much of a coincidence…” Nigel chipped in.

Spike dumped _Othello_ on the windowsill, behind the sink. The blinds rattled, but he committed himself to their wretched group. “What?”

Lydia was looking at him speculatively, and speccily. “I wouldn’t have thought he was the Slayer’s type,” she added, explaining nothing. She glanced back to the others, her back still straight like a schoolmistress. “I met him – well, it must have been ten years ago now. You remember, sir,” she added to Travers, “on my research trip.” Travers nodded; Spike narrowed his eyes as he watched them. “He spent the whole interview smoking and playing with his dog tags…” Lydia wrinkled her nose. “Asked me if I’d ever seen a man with dreadlocks before.”

After a moment’s silence, Nigel laughed. “Don’t deny you loved it, Chalmers,” he said, almost sounding like a human being.

“Can we get back to the point?” Spike interrupted, even as Lydia scoffed, wondering what had happened to reduce him to this. Perched on a countertop like a 90s sitcom, one hand rather too close to the grime on the edge of the sink basin... At that moment, of course, he remembered how any reason to get Buffy home from her was an avenue worth pursuing. “Who is this bloke?” he asked, feeling focused.

“Well, you’ve met him,” Lydia asserted, not actually quite as nervous as Spike remembered her. Presumably getting blown up did something for a person. She still adjusted her glasses when he stared at her too long – and blushed, which was nice. It was sweet to know he could still get a reaction from somewhere. “He was four and you probably didn’t see him,” she twittered on, looking down. “And he only had a sketchy memory of you, which didn’t help because I had no photographs later than 1907…”

“Whatever happened to him, anyway?” Nigel interrupted, as though Spike was irrelevant to the conversation they’d just been having. He was talking to Travers and Althanea. “I always heard that Crowley had meant to send him to Bedales.”

Then Travers was chortling, like he hadn’t expected to. “Oh yes," he commented cheerily. "I had forgotten about that.” Not for the first time, he seemed far away, holding his mug in his one free hand, the other still useless at the end of his sling. “It would have been nice to have Bernard back in London.”

Spike could feel the growl in the back of his throat. He leaned forward, bringing his hands to the edge of the countertop, before Lydia took pity on him. “He’s Nikki Wood’s son,” she told him, raising her eyebrows so the implications would sink in. “If he’s not somebody else,” she added, glancing away like she had never known conviction.

The growl came out of Spike like a groan of frustration. This was just his luck, wasn’t it? As if unlife wasn’t complicated enough.

“I suppose the Slayer could do worse,” Nigel continued, pointedly looking around at Spike while he took another sip of tea. Spike narrowed his eyes.

“Now, Naagesh, that’s quite enough,” Althanea interrupted, distracting Spike’s attention.

It wasn’t enough, however, that he didn’t notice the way Nigel rolled his eyes. “Honestly, ma’am” he said, “you can call me Nigel. I don’t mind.”

“I call people by their names,” the witch snipped back, rather high-mindedly in Spike’s opinion. “Not by Harrow’s answer to cultural integration.”

Now Spike was rolling his eyes: first Bedales, now Harrow. If there was one thing he did not miss from the mother country, it was school talk. “Is he a threat or isn’t he?” Spike asked Lydia, trying to get them back on track, at least to somewhere.

Lydia frowned, not necessarily amenable to this suggestion. “Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” she said, dismissively. Then, quite suddenly, she met his eyes and brought her other hand to her mug. She asked him carefully, “I assume you mean to Buffy?”

Spike nodded, slowly.

“No; it’s simply…” she added, blushing, eyes to the breakfast bar. Nigel snickered, the pillock. “Well, he was rather angry when I met him,” Lydia explained. “About you. Still.”

“Ah,” Spike replied, getting it. For a moment he’d thought she’d meant something else.

\-- _earlier_ \--

Just in case the spell failed – and, really, to reassure her that he was coming with them – Buffy led the floating Spike out with her left arm around his waist and his right slung across her shoulders. It was like leaving the First’s cave again, pretty much, but with Spike this time far too light a weight and no warm sense of his gratitude crackling on the edges of her heart. Her arm was more comfortable with him a little higher up, but it wasn’t better.

It seemed, also, that it was just these four Councilites who were there, and they had nowhere to stay. The bump-test seemed to prove they were all human, at least, and they came with an unmarked yet strangely regimental SUV.

The back of the car was like a limo, or else a large taxi, with seats facing other seats behind the driver. It was slightly easier to get Spike into than Xander’s sedan had been before. Althanea drove and Travers took the passenger seat, leaving Buffy and Spike in the back with the two junior Watchers, Lydia and the other one.

“So, how did you survive?” Buffy asked, in-between directions to her house. It wasn’t the most sensitive of questions, but the Council had never been particularly sensitive with her. She needed a distraction and she figured they could take it. “Are there any more of you? Is the Devon coven OK?”

The man without a name was the one who answered. Was he called Nigel, did Buffy remember? She vaguely recalled thrusting the point of a sword in his face. “We’re the only ones, as far as we know.” Even in his sports sweater, if it was a sports sweater, he seemed kind of haunted. “It was sheer luck,” he continued, glancing at Lydia. “When the building went, we were caught under a bookcase, one end wedged up just enough to give us a crawl space while it held off the rest of the rubble. I was out for the first hour, but…”

Buffy looked at Lydia, who smiled, but clearly didn’t want to talk about it.

Silence fell for a couple more minutes, leaving Buffy with nothing to think about but the weakness in the body at her side. Taking pity on her at last, however – or so it seemed – Lydia eventually came back with, “The coven are fine.” Buffy glanced up from where she’d been staring into her lap. Lydia smiled. “Althanea was the one to rescue us, obviously, after she…” Seeing the question marks on Buffy’s face, then, the woman cut into her own commentary, nose twitching underneath her glasses. “You realise she’s Quentin’s wife, don’t you?”

“I think you’ll find he’s _my_ husband,” Althanea called from the front seat, before Buffy could reply. Her laughing eyes met the Slayer’s in the rear view mirror. Slightly perplexed by the possibility that _anyone_ would marry Travers, Buffy said nothing, but she made a mental note. _Check. No insulting Travers in front of Althanea._ The witch did actually laugh, then; Buffy took a firmer grip around Spike’s waist, wondering whether she could read her thoughts. “Where am I going now, dear girl?” Althanea asked dismissively, as if Buffy was completely transparent.

Focusing on getting home, Buffy checked out of the tinted windows to see where they were. “Oh, OK,” she said, wondering how on earth she was going to play this, with four more adults in the house who would probably want to run things. “Yeah,” she continued for the moment anyway, focusing on getting herself and Spike back to home turf, “keep going straight, and then take a right onto Revello. It’s pretty much on the corner.”

\-- _later_ \--

The Potentials were training in the backyard. They filled up the lawn, and Kennedy was running drills while Lydia and Nigel looked on, offering pointers every now and again. It seemed like Buffy wasn’t the only one who thought this was a sight to see, because Travers was out on the porch as well. With his broken arm, he looked almost like a child who’d been left out.

She’d learned over the last few days that his arm had basically been crushed in the explosion, so it wasn’t entirely clear whether he’d get back the use of it anyway, even after the bones finished knitting. If he hadn’t been Quentin Travers, he’d have had Buffy’s sympathy.

They hadn’t really spoken much since the Initiative. A few times, Buffy had overheard him talking to the girls about the importance of strategy, playing _Risk_ sometimes with a few of them when Buffy came home from school.

Buffy figured he didn’t have much to do, without the Council to run and with his arm incapacitated. As it was, he’d never really had the build of someone who’d done much physical training. “How are they looking?” she asked him as a greeting, because that was about all he got.

Travers gave her the same respect: a glance of acknowledgement, then a nod towards the regiment. The sun was bright in the sky, and for everything they looked like a cheer squad training for a tournament. “They’re doing well,” Travers said professionally. “They’re clearly fresh, but not necessarily as much as you would… Although,” he conceded, “that girl over there…”

Buffy tried to follow where he was pointing, but very soon it wasn’t necessary. The girl screwed up a manoeuvre, the way Buffy would done a million times if she’d ever been trained like this. Everybody stopped.

What was her name? Buffy couldn’t quite place it – it was something like Claire, or Katie…

Kennedy was yelling, at least before Lydia tapped her on the shoulder. Nigel had his hands up to the group, and Buffy for some reason remembered him saying, _Magic Box shoppers!”_ Like he knew how to handle a crowd, like that was all he was looking at.

“She’s not ready,” Buffy said, feeling the danger of it in the back of her gut. _Cheer squad._ Was that all they had? First Willow and now… Some days she didn’t know what to do. Where was the confidence in this house? “None of them are ready.”

Shaking his head just once, Travers agreed. “No,” he said.

What the hell were they going to do? Buffy really wanted to know. Still watching, she couldn’t help but ask Travers, “You ever feel like this?” He looked at her, confused, so Buffy tried to explain. “When a girl gets called; when you send her to die?”

“Do I feel how?” Travers asked her directly, the words heavy.

The girls were doing manoeuvres again now – Kennedy happy to shout away. Even the ones who could do it, they were nervous. They had to be, otherwise they would’ve long told Kennedy to go screw herself. Slayers didn’t fight like this.

“Frustrated,” was how Buffy pinned down the feeling she had. It burned at the edges of her, watching these would-be Slayers. It had been burning at her all week, from the moment Spike had walked away. All she wanted was someone to resist, to react, and it felt like there was nothing she could do. “I can’t keep them alive,” she admitted, because that was what she knew. “Not all of them.”

“Do you wish that you could?” Travers asked mildly, his expression mostly blank, drawn and old.

“Some of them will die in this fight,” Buffy said, refusing to answer him, because she recognised in that moment how it was true. “And it won’t be because of me.”

The phone was ringing, back inside the house. Buffy figured she would have to be the one to get it. Willow looked to her the way all of these girls did, the way Xander always had and the way all of them would, at least some point before the end. Maybe this was what it meant to lead, but she wasn’t sure that it should be.

With one last look at the crowd of girls in her yard, Buffy was happy to leave them for the moment and go back into the kitchen. She was chewing over her thoughts, even as she went inside, and almost walked straight into Anya, who was storming up through the basement door. “I mean it,” Anya was yelling, her head turned back down the stairs. “You’re a wimpire, William!”

Buffy stopped, waited. _No._ Anya was startled as she turned around, slamming the door.

“Assassins,” she explained, in a more level tone, as if the Slayer was supposed to understand.

Buffy guessed it was something to do with how Spike and Anya had gone out together the night before, not that she’d kept track of when they’d come home.

“Spike ran away instead of fighting them,” Anya finished indignantly, before she continued on her way back into the house.

 _No, Spike,_ the thought came unbidden. _Not you too._

Shaking her head, Buffy finished her own path through the kitchen, picking up the phone.

“Summers residence,” she said absently, even as her mind was calculating what it would mean to have Willow and Spike both frightened out of their wits and a whole bunch of scared teenage girls as their army. _I’ve been too soft on him. I’ve been too soft on all of us._ Sometimes, it really felt like they were screwed.

It was Giles on the end of the phone. He was calling to say that he’d found another refugee, apparently. Of course, he couldn’t let the conversation end without reminding her that everyone was depending on the Slayer to get them through. Oh, and ask about Willow.

.


	4. free association IV

\-- _afterwards_ \--

“And then he explained that it was something about dragons. Some magic thing. Only he didn’t know about any dragons in Sunnydale, so most likely he was being completely useless. Thank you, Quentin Travers.”

The explanation had been torturously long, and Buffy had mostly zoned out. Travers had soon gone to bed, though, and then Buffy had had nothing to do but figure out what he’d actually meant. It had seemed pointless to head upstairs just so that she wouldn’t sleep, so Buffy had sought out the only other person likely to be awake at this late hour, namely their resident vampire.

It was a toss-up, really, whether Buffy had spent so much time with Spike recently because he was Spike, or because she was trapped in a crowded house with only him on the same schedule as her a lot of the time. She figured that if they hadn’t already known each other, this would have brought them together.

As it was, they did know each other, and so it was almost comfortably familiar to find herself down in the basement at was apparently 2am, chilling with Spike on his bed and explaining this latest turn in what had to be her least favourite day yet of this year.

The weirdness of before, that had mostly subsided. A couple of empty heys, an awkward moment while Spike shifted around on the bed so Buffy could sit where she always sat – a meaningful glance – and then they were back to normal. Spike asked what Travers had wanted, and so Buffy got to explaining.

It was different now, of course, this familiar feeling of chatting to Spike on his bed. There was an elephant in the room which was trumpeting how he’d kissed her, less than half an hour before. OK, it had only been on her forehead, nothing more than how Buffy had kissed _him_ when he’d been unconscious, but he didn’t know about that. There was a frisson of tension in everything they did, here and now. It made the way they were talking less like they were buds at a sleepover and more like something else.

Buffy knew she was kidding herself, of course, to think she’d _ever_ come down to the basement with simple motives – and not because it was private, nor else because it was intimate. Spike’s legs were about an inch from hers where they both sat against the wall. The silence hummed while he thought about what she’d just said, a frown between his human-shaped eyebrows. She wasn’t fair to him, coming here, doing this. Not really. It was a dangerous thing to do, softening them and their ability to face the fight ahead. Yet Buffy did it anyway.

“An _incantatio dracontea_?” Spike repeated Travers’ words seriously, somehow translating her mangled Latin. “A holy _incantatio_ at that?” He chuckled, like he couldn’t quite believe it. “That’s what he wants you to be messing with?” Tapping his skull back against the wall, Spike looked across the room to the stairs, shaking his head. “Either it’s the drugs his wife’s got him on, or else he has finally gone round the bend.”

“What’s so crazy about it?” Buffy asked, a little curious. Bizarrely, it didn’t sound like Spike thought it wouldn’t work, just that it was stupid to attempt. In Buffy’s experience, it was those ideas which tended to be the best, at least as a starting point. She almost felt hopeful. “Holy magics can only be a good, right?”

“Yeah,” Spike told her sarcastically, still clearly a little amused. “If you’re a messenger for the Powers that Be, maybe an oracle, maybe one of the good fae, then have at it. The rest of us…”

Magic was one of those things Buffy didn’t really understand. She looked at Spike pointedly, because he was supposed to get that and _not_ make her feel like an idiot.

Still smiling, Spike let his hand cross the fraction of space between them to take hers, apparently no grander gesture than a touch of reassurance. “You know black magic,” Spike reminded her, as he twined their fingers together.

Buffy held her breath, pretending like she wasn’t. They didn’t take each other’s hands like this, not usually. Tonight, however, it seemed as though Spike felt like being bold.

There was a smirk on his face as he continued, probably because of the tremble in Buffy’s bones. It didn’t seem to matter for some reason, that the conversation topic was actually pretty serious. “You’ve seen it rip people apart,” he continued, still about black magic, “the way it would’ve ripped Red apart.” On the blue sheets, their hands together were kind of pretty; Buffy couldn’t help but admire them as Spike finished, “Holy magic’s the opposite of that. Light magic, but more than your usual white earth stuff…” The tone of his voice lowered, almost seductive, still talking. “Warrior of light, like you, you might survive it, but, Buffy…”

She snuck a glance at his face, not raising her head. Spike wasn’t focused on what he was saying: that much was obvious from the glassiness in his eyes. He certainly wasn’t recommending this course of action, and Buffy was happy to pretend she wasn’t taking it seriously either. “Well,” she conceded, full of tension she didn’t really expect to have that evening, “I guess if there’s no dragon we can contact anyway, who could help…”

“What?” Spike replied, playing with her thumb. The dryer was running, which was distinctly unsexy, but Buffy felt a little spellbound all the same. _No. Recon now, other thoughts…_ “There’s a dragon who lives in the back of the Bronze,” Spike continued absently. “Holiest motherfucker in the country, by the tell of it. Who d’you think hoards all the decent beer in that place?”

Caught up in their unannounced game of thumb war, it took a moment for Buffy to take in what Spike had said. “Huh?” she asked, feeling it as her face screwed up.

It wasn’t entirely clear which one of them had forgotten what they were talking about. Buffy was confused for a moment; Spike’s eyes widened as he realised he would only be putting ideas in her head if he kept talking. “Er…” he began, groping for cover, his face a picture. “Nothing.”

“There’s a dragon in the _Bronze?_ ” Buffy insisted, not sure if she was confused or not.

Spike rolled his eyes, in a way that Buffy knew meant he was cursing himself. “Not a great one,” he admitted, which made no sense. “I’ve never met her; never bothered to ask for an invitation. Didn’t fancy getting fried. But,” he said, like this was something Buffy should really have known, “everyone knows she’s the only reason the Bronze is still standing. Also why they only serve Coors Light.”

Her mind churning, Buffy nodded, looking away. “But this dragon,” she suggested, “it – she might know some way to deal with the First.”

That was a good thought – a really hopeful thought. She didn’t know how to protect everyone; didn’t think it was fair, sometimes, that they expected her to. Nonetheless, if there was a way that wasn’t about taking on demonic energy, rotting the heart of who she was…

“Yeah,” Spike agreed, squeezing her hand to draw her attention back. She looked at him: he looked worried. “But, Buffy, it’s ridiculous. You can’t…”

He trailed off, presumably at her expression. Buffy wasn’t sure what she was feeling. It was mostly like hope, but it was something much more measured and rational than that. There was an idea here, a really serious idea about how they could beat back the First Evil. “It’s gotta be something we look into,” she said, staring Spike down.

He had that look he got sometimes, like he was exasperated and she was ridiculous, but also as though he wanted so badly to believe in what she was saying. It was one of those few looks that made Buffy feel like she could actually be a leader of people – and vampires, and whoever else she had on her side.

On this relentlessly squeaking mattress, Buffy couldn’t just feel it, she could hear it when Spike gave in. He slumped towards her. “Thank you,” she said seriously, reaching forward with her spare hand before she could think about it. Still caught up in the joy of this particular feeling, she clasped Spike’s cheek with her spare hand and kissed him, aiming for his cheek but hitting his lips mostly by accident.

It was short, close-mouthed, and – for them – pretty innocent. Yet, when it was over, Spike was staring at her like they’d entered a parallel universe.

\-- _earlier_ \--

“Did you do it to spite me?”

“Huh?”

“As well as Giles. More than him. Did you do it to spite me?”

They were still sitting on the sofa, a little too late into the early morning after her date. Everyone had long gone to bed – they’d gone before Spike had first approached her – but now the air was quiet, with only the soft, uncanny sound of all the appliances just too far away in the kitchen. The house was asleep, and there was only the two of them to watch themselves.

Spike had been animated as he’d told her about his day, what he’d overheard from the Watchers. His eyes had lit up; his hands had gestured. Buffy knew it had been a mistake to turn back to him, to let him engage her, but she hadn’t been able to resist.

Now, however, she was trapped there with him looking at her like he wanted a serious answer. The questions had tumbled out of him and at least for the first couple of moments afterwards her eyes were caught in his earnest expression. Then, however, he caved before she could get over the shock. “Sorry,” Spike said, shaking his head, pulling back from her. “I didn’t mean that.”

“No,” Buffy said, reaching out before she could stop herself. Her hands landed on Spike’s, right where he was resting them in his lap. “You can ask me. You should ask me.”

He shouldn’t have been asking her, obviously. It had been a wake-up call, their conversation after Spike had woken up. All the panic, all the emotion she had felt for Spike down in the Initiative – Buffy knew she’d let herself go too far. It had been clear in his surprise and consternation afterwards, when she’d suggested he allow her to get into the intimate, squiggly grey matter of his head.

Really, she was ashamed of herself, for how much she wanted it. It wasn’t even that it was Spike, necessarily, maybe. Buffy knew it: she was lonely. To fix the trigger or not, the idea of having that sort of familiarity with someone, just for a little while, it was a tempting escape from playing the aloof woman at war.

Spike was looking at her, his hands a little shivery as Buffy held them. He looked afraid. “Well, did you?” he asked, like he could barely risk the intonation of a question. “It worked, if so,” he added, with too much self-deprecation. “I couldn’t bear it, the whole time you were gone, the thought of you and him…”

Right in front of her, Spike squeezed his eyes shut, a sort of violent urgency in him; Buffy wasn’t sure how to react. There was a way Spike had, of telling her too much, giving her the ammunition to hurt him, and it just made her wonder at what point he’d forgotten that she could still be his enemy. There was no way for her to protect him. “I did,” she whispered, proving how she wouldn’t keep him safe.

Because she had gone on the date to spite him. After all, the other thing that was more tempting than closeness to Spike? Rejecting that thought entirely. It had been easy, when she’d gone to work that day, to forget she even had a vampire at home in her basement who gave her those sort of thoughts. Buffy had pretended she was a free and casual investigator of the dating scene as well as potential evil, and every word had come easy.

Sometimes she didn’t understand her own actions.

It seemed that Spike did, though. He nodded, offering nothing but a wry quirk of his eyebrows. “Figures.”

As he looked away, Buffy caught Spike’s jaw in her hand. The quiet of the night made it seem like that was something she could actually do. As an immediate reaction, he covered her fingers with his own and looked back, his gaze intense. “Spike…”

Even as she trailed off, Buffy longed for one of them to do something. It wasn’t her place to start something with Spike, not really. Willow had already mocked her that day and Buffy knew her job was to be a role model for the girls. She couldn’t go around throwing herself at vicious creatures of the night.

Not that it was so very clear how this creature was vicious. As his gaze dropped away and he let go of her hand, Spike took seconds to make his excuses and leave her. All Buffy wanted was to follow after him.

\-- _earlier_ \--

It wasn’t all that fun going after Buffy, in the end. Even when the distress call came from Xander, giving Spike the perfect excuse to go and get the Slayer, he’d already been thrown for six by the First’s new commentary on him. That took most of the thrill out of the adventure.

More than that, by the time he got to the restaurant, it seemed as though dinner was almost finished anyway. Buffy was riding out the downswing of her glorious evening, sucking on pears and everything sweet. It made Spike’s head burn where the chip had been; his eyes and throat itching with the smell of sugar.

Still, it at least turned out that Robin Wood wasn’t quite the hard man Lydia had remembered. He seemed to have mellowed, shaved his head, though Spike knew appearances would always be deceiving. That much was clear from how the man looked at him, half a glimmer of recognition in his eyes the moment he clocked that Spike was a vampire.

Maybe it was the soul, but Spike couldn’t say he was hugely looking forward to whatever confrontation was dwelling in Wood’s eyes. Really, with what the First was saying about him, he wasn’t sure that he should be looking forward to it in any case, with anticipation or else with dread.

They rescued the boy, but Spike’s mind whirred all the way home. It was the soul, he was certain, taking him out of the moment and into his own head. Every thought he had these days, it was like the soul was behind it. And Buffy – she said nothing. She was distant, the way she’d been ever since the Initiative, and Spike knew his time had come.

With the excitement, and not least with Andrew’s nonsense, everyone went straight to bed that night. Before he could make it downstairs, though, Spike found himself caught up in one of these particularly nagging thoughts, telling him that Buffy needed to know. She needed to recognise… It was over between them – and it had long been so – and now it would be better if they both recognised it.

Of course, Spike was supposed to be ignoring voices in his head, but this time he didn’t. She did deserve to know, Spike figured. Not just about Wood and their connection, but about the rest of it. The daft ploy of Willow’s and Andrew’s. What the First had had to say about him, how it wasn’t time for him yet. What that meant.

Left behind by the crowd, Spike found Buffy curled up on the sofa, staring into not much of anything. When she noticed him, she smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Spike figured she was probably still mad that he wouldn’t let her risk the quagmire that was his head, all the nasties he had set to hurt her – but he planned to say his piece in any case. It didn’t have to matter, anymore.

“How was the date?” he asked as an opening, though he could have kicked himself for saying it. Buffy raised her eyebrows, but since she didn’t say anything, Spike assumed he had an invitation to sit down. Sure enough, she shifted as if to accommodate him, no matter how there was masses of room. “I didn’t plan on interrupting,” Spike tried.

“But you sure found it easy,” Buffy bit back, not actually with all that much accusation in her voice. She rolled her eyes, as if at herself, then pulled a cushion towards her – corner up so she could play with it. “I had a good time,” she said, still defensive. “It was nice.” Then she paused. “How was your night?” she added politely, glancing at him.

It took a moment for Spike to realise he was hanging on her every word. “Yeah, fine,” he said eventually, unstable, looking away. “I read a book.”

“Huh.” 

Clasping his hands around his knees, Spike prayed for strength and took inventory of the coffee table. Pointless tray for no potpourri, yep. Book in a language he couldn’t recognise, yep. The discarded remains of a box of Twinkies, yep. Too many residents of this house were fucking slobs. “He’s a demon fighter too, I heard,” he finally found it within himself to say, trying to play it casual. “Wood. Son of a Slayer and everything.”

Startled, Buffy turned her head to look at him. “How did you know that?” she asked, a frown across her brow.

“Watchers,” he replied, with a shrug. Buffy nodded once, like it made sense. The tension between them threatened to return, so Spike ploughed right on through it. “Turns out Ms. Chalmers had the pleasure of meeting him once,” he said, “about ten years ago.” It wasn’t that he was dreading telling her this, exactly; she had probably already figured it out. Nonetheless, he took in a stiff breath to steady his nerves as he told it to her – not quite so straight. “Back when she was doing her research on me.”

Buffy looked at him for a long moment. The silence was gorgeous, somehow, and Spike wasn’t sure how he could ever… Then, as understanding struck, Buffy smoothed a hand across her forehead, massaging her temple when she reached it. “I flunk so hard at math,” she said, sounding annoyed at herself. “He said he was four; I figured he was thirty… And my life is full of coincidence. ’77, right?” she asked, putting Spike on the spot. “What was her name, Nikki? Nikki Wood?”

“Yeah.” Spike nodded, cold as he was thrown back into the conversation. Two years ago, the admission that he was even tangentially part of Buffy’s life would have been enough to warm him down to his balls. Now he just felt like he always did, a sack of wasted bones she should be rid of. “It’s looking like…” It went against every scrap of carrion he was, but fuck him, in the end – Spike finished, “It’s looking like I should make myself scarce.”

Buffy appeared surprised, but in the direction of somewhere else. Her eyes widened, staring over the other side of the room. She said nothing.

“Don’t think you heard,” Spike pushed it, pulling the words out of his chest. “About the First, earlier. Among everything else,” he explained, “it seems to reckon it’s not _time_ for me yet. Sounds like I should get gone…”

“No,” Buffy replied, still not looking at him. That was it. Just ‘no’. No prevarication, no negotiation, just one single, point-blank command.

It pissed Spike off, but he tried to stay reasonable about it. It didn’t make sense, and Buffy didn’t seem to be in a rush to clarify, but he knew she never did, at first. With his eyes reading her body for anything she would give him, Spike pointed out the obvious. “You’ve got back-up,” he said, bracing himself for the moment she would let him go. “Way I hear it, he can handle himself, and the First can’t have its claws in him quite as deep as me. He’ll do for a fight.”

“That’s not why I need you here,” was what Buffy replied. The words hung in the air like stardust, and when she’d finished saying them Spike found Buffy offering him one long, superior glance, as if he was supposed to figure out what she meant and have it be enough for him.

A small, demonic, hopeful part of him – it did. That was the terrifying thing; it wanted to choke him and all.

What Spike really wanted to ask was where the principal fit in, if that was the case. What was tonight? Would he continue to take Buffy on dates even while Spike did whatever he was destined to do, which apparently wasn’t just to throw a few decent punches.

Knowing his luck, of course, Spike reckoned Buffy probably meant she needed him to do the laundry, which he did far too often. He had a superpowered sense of smell, so it only took a certain amount of dirty, hormone-ridden clothes to be left in the basement before he figured even the nasty soap stench would be better.

By the time his throat opened again, though, the moment had passed, so he didn’t ask. In any case, Spike had a feeling this particular Slayer wouldn’t give him a straight answer, so he stayed on the point about himself. “Did you not hear I’m a liability?” he asked, not letting himself meet her eyes, knowing she thought it too. “From how it sounds –”

“From how it _sounds_ ,” Buffy snapped, moving her cushion so it was no longer between them, “we should be talking to Althanea and getting your trigger fixed.” She stared him down, none of that cute girl left that he’d seen her playing on her date. Spike waited. “But I don’t wanna argue about that again,” she conceded, glancing down at the fuzzy brown seat cushions, the deep sharp line between them. “So don’t talk about leaving,” she finished, almost like it hurt her. “I don’t wanna hear it.”

Spike bit his tongue. It wasn’t as though he was particularly keen on the idea of leaving Revello Drive, let alone Sunnydale. Fun as it could be, also, he didn’t especially enjoy arguing with Buffy when she was in this particular mood. He sank back into the sofa, surrendering.

Still leaned forward, Buffy herself was back to contemplating the carpet, elbow on her knees and her hand almost covering her mouth. “You know,” she said, seemingly continuing her previous thought. Her tone was mellower, though. Spike stayed quiet, hands useless on his thighs. “I was talking to Giles the other day… Well, it was more like he came and talked to me.” She shrugged, as though the difference wasn’t important. “There was this whole thing. I couldn’t tell if he was warning me or if he was angry with me or…” Buffy rambled on. Eventually she finished, frowning, “He said we had a ‘connection’.”

Spike raised his eyebrows, wondering not for the first time what exactly Rupert’s game was. “You what?” he asked, going with the most likely eventuality. “You and the principal?”

Dropping her hand past her chin, Buffy looked at him as if he was being thick. Or else as if he was fishing.

“Oh,” Spike replied in surprise, consolidating that particular piece of information. The Ripper was talking about them as if they were together; Buffy was looking at him as if he was supposed to expect it. “Right.” It seemed a little sudden, as far as he was concerned. Presumably that was the way of things, sometimes. God help him that he didn’t need to breathe.

“I think I went on that date to spite him,” Buffy admitted, like she didn’t entirely understand it herself. Spike figured she could join the club. “Everything he was saying… Last year I would have killed to have a father-figure, but then he skips town and when he comes back he thinks he can talk about what he wants for me.”

“He cares about you,” Spike offered, hard-heartedly, mostly to check he could still speak. He looked down at the sofa arm, picked at a loose thread. Giles was never his favourite, but if he knew Buffy, she’d regret speaking ill of him in the long run. More than that, with this talk of skipping town, Spike was conscious how he’d not long been suggesting he do the very same. “Always has.”

Buffy sighed. “He’s got a funny way of showing it sometimes.” Spike risked another glance at her, and it seemed she was smiling at him, grimly and close-mouthed. “The difference between you and him, Spike,” she said, like she knew exactly what he was thinking, “is that when I ask _you_ not to go, I figure you might actually listen.”

More than by anything she’d said that evening, Spike was taken aback. Even more so as Buffy stretched out her arm towards his hand. She took his fingers and squeezed them, just for a moment before she climbed off the sofa and onto her feet.

“We should both get some sleep,” she said, even more enigmatic than she’d been before.

Spike looked up at her, knowing from the ache in his bones and the hole in his head that she was right. It was back to the basement for him, until they found themselves in another day. All he wanted, of course, was to ask Buffy not to leave him, maybe keep him company a little while longer – but he had no idea how she’d respond, because that was the way of things, wasn’t it?

“Interesting chat I had with the Watchers,” he said at last, quickly, just as she’d turned away. He had his hands on the edge of the seat cushion, ready to follow after her. After all, Spike was nothing if not pathetic. “Doesn’t sound like they’re all that fond of Giles.”

Miracle of miracles, Buffy turned back. The smallest hint of light in her eyes, it seemed like she could be tempted by gossip. “Really?” she asked, her tone not giving anything away.

“Yeah,” Spike replied, gearing himself up to tell her all about it. As it was, he felt a flutter on his nerves as she came back to him. Without him even asking, she joined him again on the sofa, and this time she settled herself into the centre. Spike had to pull himself back into the corner so he could see her and there was only about an inch between his knees and hers. He started talking. “I was in the kitchen, like you can imagine…”

Of course he wouldn’t ask her if she’d gone on that date to spite _him_. With her change in tone, Spike was trying not to think it. He knew he shouldn’t.

\-- _earlier_ \--

_Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump…_

With the demon dead, all Buffy could hear was the blood pounding through her ears. It was overwhelming, for a moment; it made her shut her eyes, like she was on the brink of something. Possibly dying.

_…thump thump thump thump…_

The darkness, when she looked again, was disorientating, with no other sounds for her to orientate herself within. Bereft of bearings, Buffy glanced around wildly – until she was able to pinpoint where her flashlight had fallen, thrown to the ground where its light _had_ died.

_…thump thump…_

Her footsteps were heavy as she trudged over. On the way, she gradually came back to herself, blood rushing to her head as she bent down to retrieve the stupid thing.

It didn’t seem right, somehow, that she’d been so stressed out by so short a fight. Obviously, she wasn’t getting enough rest just recently, but as far as Buffy could tell there was nothing she could do about that. There were so many things to think about, things she didn’t have time to think about, not least…

“Buffy?” Spike murmured from behind her, his voice weak in the darkness with what had to yet be a bucketload of pain. This had been demon number five, after all, and that made five too many. The two of them had been working through the Initiative for at least an hour, but they’d yet to recognise any of the rooms or the drugs contained within. The complex was far bigger than either of them had anticipated.

Feeling slow, Buffy grabbed the flashlight, spun on grit, and made her way back to Spike’s side. “Damn discount store junk…” she swore as her now apparently broken light refused to come on, trying to keep things casual, no matter that things were starting to look pretty hopeless. “Spike?”

Buffy looked down at him, crouching. He was slumped on the ground where he had been since the last demon attack, propped against the wall. “Are you OK?” she asked, taking his wrist in her hand. “I mean – dumb question. Are you…”

He groaned.

Throwing the useless flashlight away, Buffy reached over to Spike’s, which was at least still good where it lay by his side. It was turned away from them, throwing light into nowhere, so she turned it back towards Spike’s leg.

Of course, when she did that, Buffy’s heart had nothing to do but sink. In each room, with each fight, it had felt like Spike was getting weaker, but now it was clear they had real problems. In the recast light, it looked more like he’d been in a fight than her. Blood was dribbling from his nose, dark and shining, and his eyes were closed in pain. The light cast deep shadows across his forehead, where a scowl was dragging furrows. If anything, he seemed paler than usual – and this was halogen. “God, Spike,” Buffy whispered, feeling every ache from her recent fights, feeling – lost. “God; what do I do?”

What was the point of it all, really, if this was where they found themselves?

Spike, thankfully, didn’t acknowledge that particularly stupid question. Nor the moment of weakness Buffy felt herself instantly recoil from. “We’re not gonna find it,” he muttered instead, telling them both what they already knew. “Not even sure if I’m remembering right anymore. We should…”

“Don’t talk like that,” Buffy warned him, resisting the urge to panic. She took a tighter grip on his wrist, like a show of her strength would be enough for him to find his. “Don’t – don’t talk,” she stuttered as blood gathered on his lip. “Relax. I’ll…”

She didn’t know what they were going to do. The flower shop was clearly a bust, for real. Here, it seemed like there was nothing but demons and bad memories, and plenty of them.

Possibly now, Buffy knew, the darkness was getting to her, but it all seemed so unfair. It had only been in the last few days that Spike had acted as though he was getting better after the Turok Han’s torture. After the high school basement and his return into the killing fields, why didn’t they deserve a break?

“We’ve gotta keep looking,” Buffy said, trying to push her feelings aside and focus in on the facts. “I think…” In the periphery of the light, on the wall across from them, it looked like there was a cabinet there. The glazed door had long been smashed, but there were still bottles tucked into the corners. “Can you remember what this stuff looks like? What it smells like?” She glanced down at her patient, just in time for him to wince, his whole body jerking with what had to be another shock. “Spike…”

On instinct, she moved. Leaning in, closer to him, Buffy pressed one set of fingers to Spike’s jaw and ran the others along his hairline. It was dark enough that she could convince herself no one would know how close she brought her face to his, that it didn’t matter and wouldn’t matter to acknowledge how little his touch repulsed her now. How that repulsion had become attraction, again.

“I don’t know how to make it better,” she whispered, squinting to see his features in the shadows.

“Don’t,” Spike enunciated, the words barely audible. He trembled with pain, shuddering again, against her. “Don’t…”

He was fading, and if he’d been human Buffy knew she should be trying to keep him awake. Nothing the chip did could kill him, though, so as she felt the weight of Spike’s head in her hand, she figured it probably be best to get some sleep. “It’s… It’s OK,” she promised, giving in in a way she knew she shouldn’t, changing her tone to reassure him. “I’ll figure something out,” she said. The words were light, sibilant as they left her, softening her lips just before she pressed a kiss to Spike’s forehead.

It was a bad idea, to let herself. It was a really bad idea, one she shouldn’t have had – but he was out by the time Buffy pulled back. Then she was alone in the dark, with nothing but regret and a pounding heart.

.


	5. free association V

\-- _afterwards_ \--

“What was that for?”

Buffy’s lips still tingled with the feeling of kissing Spike’s, so she wasn’t quite sure what to say when he did what she should have expected, namely react. She pressed the offending parts of her body together.

Her heart was racing, _thump thump thump thump thump,_ and their hands were still clasped into sweaty union. Taking a full inventory of herself, Buffy realised she was blushing, which was the most embarrassing thing to happen in all her twenty-two years.

“It wasn’t because I got the coat back, was it?” Spike continued, because he really had no idea how to shut off his mouth. They both glanced down when he said it; Buffy saw his eyes moving as hers slipped to the piece of clothing in question.

Absolutely, it was familiar, the way the folds of leather wrapped around him. When he’d been home, he’d usually been wearing less, but when they were out this was the first layer Buffy had had to take off: it had required the most commitment, been the surest signal of her intentions. Usually they’d then had sex on it, because it was mostly clean and big enough to keep the dirt out.

Still, as strong feelings as Buffy felt sometimes about certain pairs of shoes, she hadn’t ever quite developed that relationship with Spike’s leather coat. No matter what he did with it in his own time. “No,” she confirmed, making sure she frowned so that Spike got she was serious. “That would be really weird.”

“Right,” Spike agreed, glancing away before he returned to looking at her intently. The mattress sank between them, the way they were both leaning in. Buffy tried not to think about it. “And it’s not because that Lydia bird’s been giving me the eye?”

Either he was trying to piss her off, or he had no idea how her jealousy worked. “No,” Buffy said again, holding Spike’s hand tightly enough that probably it was painful. “Although it might be now you’ve told me that,” she warned him, digging for information. “She’s been giving you the _eye?_ ”

Spike waved his spare hand dismissively. In the strip light, it was remarkably pale. He frowned, like he was trying to get to the bottom of things. Again, he began, “And it’s not…”

By this point, Buffy had had enough. “Look, Spike,” she interrupted, drawing his attention back to her face. Really, she wanted to be serious about this. It was only a tiny, small kiss; it shouldn’t change everything about them. She tried to explain, shaking their clasped hands, “I’m not a complicated person…”

“Ha!” Spike interrupted, a bright sort of challenge in his eyes, like humour or somehow like joy. It was difficult to tell in the blunt shadows of the basement.

“Shut up,” Buffy insisted, holding back her own smile. Not terribly successfully. “OK?” she asked when she had a hold of herself. “If I kiss you,” she explained it all rationally, not at all feeling the way he relaxed against her, in her hold, “it’s because I like you and because you smell good. That’s the story here.” She waved her own other hand, out into the basement and out into the night. “Not this other stuff.”

She didn’t tell him anything about what he meant to her, or why she needed him here at home. It probably showed in her face, as well, because when she looked back Spike’s eyes were narrowed suspiciously. “That’s not what you’ve said before,” he commented, like they were people with histories actually contiguous enough that they could talk about last year as though it had been them.

It caught Buffy off guard; she shifted awkwardly on the bed. “Well,” she said, trying to remember that they were talking about dragons, generally finding her mind filled with far too many memories she had been repressing. “Mostly,” she admitted, remembering, because Spike was someone who knew her feelings these days, “mostly I was lying.”

Even that, though, it didn’t get her out of the dock. “If you were lying back _then_ ,” Spike asked her suspiciously, clearly caught up as much as she was in the moment, “why should I trust you _now?_ ”

It was a stupid argument, one which on another day when the dryer wasn’t humming and Spike didn’t smell like cigarettes she would have had a clear answer for. _Because you’re the only one who does?_

This time around, though, her hand was all warm and tingly where Spike was holding it. “Guh,” Buffy cursed in frustration, while Spike’s eyes were blue. She wished she could silence the voice in her head. “Will you not shut _up_?”

And then, like a bad scene in a rom com, Buffy shoved him over just in time for him to resist falling by grabbing at her elbows, groping up her arms to her shoulders. He and his trusty coat caught on the brickwork, not falling as far as Buffy had thought they would. When she lunged over, pushing him, she went a hell of a lot further than he did. Several important half-inches, which she couldn't take back so fast. They were closer – then much closer – and as Spike came springing back it was all too easy for the struggle to resolve with their faces and lips smacked into to each other’s.

This time, the kiss wasn’t quite so chaste. For a start, the coming together part was pretty bruising: Buffy’s eyes fell shut and a gasp seized through her. After her mouth slipped open, it was all too easy to catch the seam rather than the flesh of Spike’s lips. He was ticklish there, right on the edge of his mouth, so for that reason or some other her gasp was met with a cute little chuckle-thing – but then her lip was in his mouth, and he closed against the bottom of it so tenderly she could hardly not take in the top of his.

Buffy was caught out, honestly, by the shot of adrenaline that pumped into her system the moment she inhaled. Not unexpectedly, after all, Spike did smell good. As her heart fluttered, his fingertips landed delicately on her cheek and caressed her, which again just made her shiver. She sought security, aiming for his other lip, but they both had a slightly moist thing going on for them now, which sent her stomach and her hips all to jelly. On the next pass there was tongue, which set off pretty much every chakra Buffy had.

In the end, Buffy was just heaving the Spike closer by the lapels of his musty jacket and sucking at his face. An unholy moan purred at the back of her throat and Spike was smiling – _smiling_ – into her mouth, all the while he ran his tongue so wickedly along her teeth it was like her head was made of melting chocolate. Not quite so much the artistry, Buffy at least remembered what he liked and did for that, cradling his head while he whimpered and enjoying, for a little while, what it felt like to be with him like this again.

So it went on. She’d done this before, Buffy remembered, fallen into bad habits with a vampire who’d left and come back with his soul. She wasn’t remembering his name or his face right now, but the feeling was there. This inescapable feeling.

When the kiss was over, her and Spike didn’t break apart so much as together. Nose to nose and forehead to forehead, Buffy’s hands clasped around his skull and his were tight on her shoulders. It felt like the mutual admission that this particular tension couldn’t be stretched any further without snapping into something else. The next part, they both knew – they both had to know – was where she straddled his hips and ground into him like she was at the rodeo. That part was theirs alone and Buffy burned with it, to remember.

That thought – the extra little kiss it inspired – it surged through several parts of her. This was all too fast, Buffy knew: she could feel her heart pounding to keep up. When they broke again, Spike was panting big gulps of air and Buffy was right there with him, the springs of the mattress unstable beneath her shaking legs and generally quaking lower body.

_Thump thump thump thump thump thump…_

“Whoa,” she breathed, wrenching back to look at them both. Her hands slipped to Spike’s collarbone and, when he opened his eyes, his pupils were dilated as wide and black as the darkest parts of her soul. Buffy's elbows contracted, almost enough to bring her in again. “Oh…” she added.

“Yeah,” Spike replied. He dropped an arm behind her back, used the other to pull her legs across his thighs, smoothing her down with a shaking hand. It should have been a dangerous move, but actually Buffy found herself calming down. _Wow._ A little bit of contact went a long way, and with her torso no longer contorted she at least didn’t feel like she was about to fall over any minute, most likely onto Spike in whatever way he would have her.

It did leave him fingering curlicues into her own thighs, though, looking down and not at her face. Buffy put a hand in his hair, not sure how best to touch him. Also because it was satisfying once she’d worked her way through the crust, fingers thrusting because nothing else could.

Scowling like she was an irritant fly, Spike twitched. Buffy giggled, not without delirium, but also not sure what to say as he said nothing. As she calmed down, she was content enough to break up shards of his hair – smooth the freed wisps into order again. And yet…

It was stupid, to be so confident with his body and yet so afraid of what he was thinking, but she was. Buffy didn’t want to hurt him, just like the way she didn’t want to hurt herself. She wanted to have him like this forever, standing by her side on the verge of destruction, hearts in their throats as they waited for hell to rise one of them to be swallowed into its gaping maw. The part after… That was the part after.

It would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Buffy tried to convince herself. To go after a dragon? Let alone one who lived in the Bronze.

From the way everyone talked, even Travers, it sounded like it was going to be her who was taken, this apocalypse. The girls, everyone in the house, there was no one else who was going to save them. Buffy wasn’t ready for it, not really, but she’d accepted after coming back that she never would be again.

Before that though, Buffy wanted this, the thing she and Spike suddenly had now, this soaring feeling of leaping, the only good part about dying before she ceased to feel anything so gloriously bittersweet. She wanted it to last as long as possible.

It had been going OK, really, but now they were definitely in mid-air and Buffy wasn’t quite sure what to do, with or without Spike’s hair curling through her fingers.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before Spike had clearly had enough of Buffy messing around. He let go of her leg to catch her roving hand, bring it down and bite gently at one of her knuckles.

Buffy’s heart fluttered. Their eyes met as he scraped wet teeth across skin; their gazes fused as he released her, as their arms relaxed and their fingers entwined to rest on her knees.

Smiling grimly, Buffy waited, that spark of erotic energy enough to quell her childish impulses. She was certain that if she left it long enough, then some line would come to her that it wouldn’t hurt to say. In the grim fluorescent light, Spike at least looked sympathetic, the edge of fear in his eyes no match for the hunger he had between blinks, glancing down to her breasts and her crotch and back up again, all too aware of how she was watching him.

“So,” Buffy said, squeezing Spike’s hand against her frustration, shoving her fingers between his. This had to be enough for now, even if Spike was going to pout like he did, just a little. “That was, uh…” She sought for a word. “Different?” _For us._

A couple of seconds more and Spike gave it up, his eyebrows relaxing. “Yeah,” he agreed, not for the first time in so many minutes. It seemed like this time he didn’t have any snappy comebacks. A small smile of his own and he sobered completely. Buffy felt the final thrill of it all fade away, just as he commented, blithely, “Don’t suppose we’ll see its like again for a while, right?”

In the end, there was nothing Buffy could do but shake her head. She glanced down, wondering why Spike never smelled like washing powder, all the time he spent down here with the laundry. “We have a war to win,” she said, resenting it. “Girls to inspire,” she reminded herself. “Watchers to watch.”

Hand off of her back, Spike tipped up her chin. Buffy didn’t resist looking at him, hoping he could see it, all the little she had for him. “We’ll win it,” was what he said, seriously.

That was the moment to look away – to summon the energy to leave him. So that was what she did.

\-- _earlier_ \--

When she dismissed him, the Big Bad Slayer with a mission to humiliate the house, Spike knew he had to leave. Of course, he didn’t go beyond the front porch. He just leant on the railing, still shaking with anger, trying to work his way through a cigarette and be calm by the end of it.

The tobacco didn’t taste right, with the soul back in, but Spike was beginning to get used to it. He hoped.

_You’re gonna fall over._

It was funny, to finally know what Buffy was thinking. Not flattering, certainly, but it at least explained some of the pity he’d seen in her eyes, something about her feelings on the whole trigger business.

What he was going to do about it, of course, Spike didn’t know. Right at the moment, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to try.

The door opened and closed behind him, a little while into his smoke. When Spike glanced back, he was surprised to find that his nose hadn’t got it wrong. “What do you want?” he asked Dawn, refusing to give her the way in he had the last time.

“Buffy sent me,” she replied shortly, looking pissed and not at him. It made sense. “I’m supposed to talk to you.”

“Is that right?” Spike replied, taking a drag of his cigarette. He leaned back against the railing, crossed his spare arm over his chest and wondered what she was going to say. “Go on then.”

Dawn crossed her arms straight back at him, still staring off into the road. It was a quiet night, so there wasn’t much to see. Only his old tree, Spike supposed, but that had hardly seen much action of late. That was, if he cared to think about such action, which he didn’t, especially not when two-bit Slayers were reaming him out in front of everyone like he was a fucking footsoldier.

It seemed like Dawn was happy enough to let his thoughts keep running on, which was annoying, because they’d ended up right back where he didn’t want.

Growling, Spike shut his eyes and concentrated instead in getting the weird-tasting smoke settled right at the sweet point, down the back of his throat where the taste buds stopped and he could just savour the warmth. He could hold it there as long as he liked; that was the magic of not breathing. And he would – focus on the workings of his body like it was some sort of meditation.

“I don’t know why you’re growling at me, you know,” Dawn suddenly snapped at him, which made the smoke come out in one particularly pathetic cough. Her eyes were glinty in the evening light. “She’s the one who yelled at you. You don’t have to take it out on everyone else.”

“Who’s taking it out on anybody?” Spike snapped back, bored now of smoking. He stabbed his fag out on his belt buckle (this particular belt was knackered anyway). “You’re the one who came out here.”

Apparently this topic bored Dawn even more than it bored him. A bird rustled, cawing as it escaped Spike's tree. “You shouldn’t do that in front of minors, you know,” the girl changed the subject after a moment, lifting her chin at his crotch. Spike raised an eyebrow. “It’s suggestive.”

Taken aback, Spike glanced down the cigarette butt, still in his hand. He took a look at himself and tried to figure out how this girl’s dirty little mind had gone from a perfectly functional piece of clothing to what lay behind it. He’d been wearing jeans this tight since 1967, for fuck’s sake. It was fashion, wasn’t it?

And then Dawn was snickering. Realising that he’d been had, Spike glared at her. “The look on your face,” she said, like she almost – _almost_ – intended to share the joke with him.

Spike conceded the point, if only because there was no good way to complain. “You’re a laugh riot.”

“Thanks,” Dawn replied, with a short, false smile. “So,” she added, sweetness vanished from her voice. Another moment; another shift in topic. Spike had whiplash. “Are you coming back inside or what?”

If he hadn’t figured that he would be the one who ended up on yard duty, Spike would have flicked his cigarette butt into the front garden, just for effect. As it was, he kept it squeezed between his fingertips, wishing he’d kept it for the last few puffs. “Or what,” he told Dawn eventually, favouring her with a false smile of his own. At the end of the day, the girl hadn’t spoken to him in months. She, and Buffy more accurately, was living in a dream world if she thought she could just click her fingers and get him somewhere he didn’t fancy being right now. Soul or no bloody soul.

“Great,” Dawn grumbled, rolling her eyes. She rubbed her arms against the breeze, which wasn’t even cold. “You’re gonna make us stand here all night.”

“Don’t let me keep you,” Spike told her, settling his stance a little more firmly and pushing his hands into the pockets of his hated army surplus. It was hardly like he couldn’t win a game of patience with a sixteen-year-old girl. Hell, he was immortal. He could wait.

After all, Dawn was many things, but the master of her impulses she was not. Once upon a time it would have been fair to say that they had that in common.

Time passed, and for a little while, with the focus of it, Spike’s mind was blissfully empty.

So, all right, the soul hadn’t quite fixed his impulse control. Spike could admit that – and had to, eventually. Within seconds of this particular silence, his gaze had drifted back to the front door and he couldn’t help but wonder what was being said inside. For all he knew, the parts were being divvied out for some hare-brained mission Nigel or whoever had come up with and he was missing his chance to get on the Slayer’s team.

Not that he cared, of course – Spike thought as he resisted the urge to tap out a drumline with his foot. Buffy had ratted him out to Nikki’s son, like the soul was a badge of honour rather than the sign of weakness any self-respecting vampire hunter would take it for. And, again, she’d started on at him in front of everyone, like she thought he’d always forgive her or some bloody nonsense.

Risking a look at his opponent, Spike tried to figure out how long it would be before it became more ridiculous to play this game than to win it.

Not six feet away from him, Dawn was staring down at the decking, her mouth small and flat and serious as she waited.

Oh.

Surprisingly to Spike, Dawn’s breathing was even; her pulse steady at rest. With her jeans she was wearing a collared shirt that made her look like she was ready for admission to a seminary.

This was the problem with the soul. The guilt and the nightmares, Spike had expected that. It was difficult to admit that he hadn’t anticipated quite how deeply it would tear him up inside, but that was an issue of degree rather than the fact that it happened at all. No, the thing he still hadn’t quite got his head around were the unexpected stabs of empathy. They got him right in the gut.

Right now, looking at Dawn, he was getting one. This wasn’t the kid he’d known, hungry for attention, full of spit and vinegar. She had patience; she had resentment. She had a bunch of things Spike couldn’t read because he wasn’t sodding psychic, but with the breeze on the back of his neck it was like there were spiders crawling on his skin.

“Look, Dawn, I’m sorry,” Spike said, because it would have made him sick not to say it. The railing creaked as he pulled away from it.

It made the girl look up, but her gaze immediately skittered away. “For what?” she asked dully, looking past him.

His head dropped, all Spike could remember were the evenings they’d spent on this porch, her on the root beer and him on the real stuff, swinging on the swingseat and laughing at the neighbours. “For all of it,” he said honestly, shaking the memory away. He shrugged. “Everything.”

Dawn snorted, which was a bit of a snub. “You bought that feeling,” she said, the hate in her eyes like some sort of rusty pike. It didn’t go into him all that quick, but it hurt like hell. Another bird twittered somewhere. It didn’t matter. “Buffy’s right,” she added, with the same look of accusation. “Everything you do now; you’re not the same person. What you say, it means nothing.”

Spike didn’t know what to say, for the first time in years. A sixteen year-old girl was cocking her eyebrow at him, standing on a worn-out old porch not all that far from a window which was on at least its fifth pane of glass, and yet somehow she had all the class in the world. “Don’t remember going to Africa figuring it was for the good of my health.” That was what came out of his mouth, but it was hardly a considered response.

Dawn shrugged, and after that it was pretty much all Spike could do to strike up another cigarette, mostly to calm the quiver in his hands.

\-- _later_ \--

For all its gnarliness, it turned out the demon Buffy summoned was fast on its feet. By the time Spike was out into the encroaching darkness, following the glimpse of it thud around the junction at the end of the road, he was already too far behind. He kept up the chase for a few blocks, right into the dark, but still he had Buffy’s words ringing in his head.

It wasn’t there, the killer instinct, right when he needed it. He could run faster than this, hunt sharper – push himself right to the edge and over it, careening on the freefall towards somewhere that would possibly be victory. It had been years since he’d truly done that, though, and tonight it wasn’t in him.

By the time he hit the edge of downtown, Spike wasn’t sure where he was going. There were people out, but apparently this thing was in the back alleys, because there were no handy screams to tell him where the demon was heading.

Catching his lack of breath at an intersection, heavy breaths unnecessary but a familiar accompaniment to the flaring tremor in his muscles, Spike wasn’t sure what the point was.

He stood with his hands hooked around his waist, wondering if any of them were going to see Buffy again. The cars drove by, stopped at the reds and revved on the greens, but Spike just watched them.

It should have been enough, this fear he had. In the old days, missing Dru like this, it would have been enough for him to tear the town apart, one street at a time until everything was dead or cowering before him. And that was the wretched girl’s point, of course. The thing was, with a soul, the world seemed so much bigger, the streets and alleyways of Sunnydale no longer a map in his head to be charted out – burned clean – but a big, swirling mess of memories, distractions and uncertainty. Too close to Willy’s, and he’d bring more of the demon world against him; too close to the old factory, and all the screams he tried to keep at bay would rise up into a deafening cacophony.

If he’d had any sort of functioning respiratory system, Spike figured he could have quite happily had a panic attack about this moment and not felt any the worse for it. What the hell had become of him?

“Spike!”

The lights were on green; two lanes of traffic running through them. One car, however, in a familiar shade of blokey silver, was pulling over to the pavement. It rode right up the curb and caused at least two other cars to blare their horns.

The rear window was open. Seconds later, the rear door. Dawn’s head poked out, along with the axe she’d apparently kept a hold of. “Get in here!” she shouted.

There was a car behind them, hoping to turn right. It was honking like there was no tomorrow. In another life, Spike would have found it the funniest thing alive. For the sake of this particular adventure, he tried – but he also got in the car.

“What the bleeding hell are you doing here?” he asked as he pulled the door in behind him.

Dawn scooted over on the backseat of what was a rather crowded car. It was Xander’s, inevitably, and he was driving. Anya was looking churlish in the passenger seat, arms crossed and tossing her hairdo. Chalmers the Watcher was the other side of Dawn, looking annoyed and leaning forward with her fingers curled around the suit hook above the other door. “Come on!” she was saying. “We can go faster than this!”

“Look, Watcher lady,” Xander continued whatever argument they were having as he pulled them away. “The other day you couldn’t even figure out the coffee machine. I don’t trust you on the right side of the road. Not in my car.”

Spike stared, seeing them all with new eyes.

“This _thing_ ,” Lydia was shooting back, “is an automatic. One could drive it blindfolded.”

The turned the corner towards the night district. Spike was thrown into the door as Lydia was thrown into Dawn. Anya decided this was the moment to chip in, “She has a point. You’re driving both slowly and recklessly.”

Gunning the engine to a load of empty revs, Xander snapped back at her, “Why did you come?” The car gradually regained speed.

“We only left home a minute ago,” Dawn muttered.

How were any of them going to survive this? “And _where_ are we going?” he roared above the noise. He was getting a tension headache: the sort of thing he used to associate with _bloody humans_ , not least after the chip was put in. This wasn’t enough, that was the thing. This really wasn’t enough.

“We’re following you,” Anya told him, not so very helpfully. She even stretched to try and find him in the rearview mirror.

Spike set his jaw; tried to hone in on this particular spark of rage. It had been a depressing thought for years, but now he tried to find comfort in it…

_This lot have saved the world. This lot have saved the world._

He’d always believed, of course – but somehow, now, it was getting more difficult. That was the frightening thing.

They would have to do better, all of them. Starting with him.

“Head to the school,” he eventually told Xander, who as usual seemed glad enough just to follow directions. It wasn’t far out of their way, and it would only take a minute.

Dawn, however, was looking at him strangely, leaning on the axe between her knees. “What’s at the school?” she asked.

Spike quelled the sick feeling in his fingers. “Just a memory,” he said.

\-- _later_ \--

Xander and Anya at least stayed in the car. Dawn and the Watcher, who were apparently on their way to becoming a variety act, decided they would follow after him, even when he said he didn’t need their help.

Luckily for Spike, neither of them had spent months getting used to the twists and turns of Sunnydale High’s slightly too supernatural basement, so he was able to lose them for a little while. It only took him moments, after all, to find himself back at his corner and the boxes where Buffy had tried to package him away.

At the time, of course, Spike had been out of it. He couldn’t even recall what his thoughts had been when Buffy had come by with his coat, nor whether she’d even said anything about why she’d brought it. All he remembered now was how he’d felt seeing her with it, her and Nikki haunting him with guilt.

 _Spike, you’re pathetic._ Had she said that? It seemed like she should have done.

That day, he hadn’t been able to face up to it. Today, as he was, they were one Slayer missing, and her parting command was for him to get his act together. Spike wished it could be so easy. He knew that somewhere in the callous-sounding heart of her, Buffy didn’t think it was, but she made it so difficult sometimes. It was her knowing which made it all the worse, of course, because Spike knew she believed in him. He had a habit of believing in her. That look on her face and it seemed like cowardice not to try and be this final, useful version of him with a soul that she wanted.

God, though – how he hated her.

The coat was buried at the bottom of a pile of junk. There was a lot of junk in this basement, which was weird considering how new the school was. It was probably something to ask Xander about, Spike supposed, if he really cared, since it could only be left over from the old school. More than likely they hadn’t had the budget to get it all cleared away.

Anyway, the coat was there, that was the important thing. Covered in dust, the heavy leather still bore all the rips and knife-wounds he’d lovingly sewn up. A couple if not a score times, he and Buffy and rutted on this thing like animals; he and Dru on occasion when they hadn’t found a bed. Spike had lived with romance, once upon a time. Or been in the process of losing it.

Chalmers and the not quite so little bit came round the corner just as Spike had got the duster out of the box, held it up in front of him. He shook it, and a few motes of lint swirled through the air.

“You’re kidding me,” was what Dawn said, looking wholly unimpressed. “We came here for your _coat_?”

“Is that…?” Lydia asked on the end of her question, with the eye of someone who’d done far too much research on him.

Spike looked at her, said nothing, and pulled Nikki’s jacket around his shoulders.

The woman shuddered, just slightly, like someone (likely him) had walked right over her over her grave. Then, however, her mouth tightened, and she looked as shrewd as any of the Watchers could be bothered to be. “You shouldn’t have to do this,” she said, like they were friends or something. “It’s no shame to become something – more… To be something other than a killing machine.” The woman shook her head. “She has no right to ask you to be something that you aren’t.”

“She didn’t,” Spike said bluntly, striding past the pair of them. He’d had a plan that he was going to walk out of this basement the way he should have done the first time, not cowering while Buffy encouraged him along. Miss Moneypenny wasn’t going to stop him – and fuck her if she thought Buffy didn’t know him best. “You wrote the memo, love,” he reminded the woman anyway. “This is who I am.”

That should have been the end of it, but of course there had never been a single moment in the entire of Spike’s existence when he’d been able to say something true and cinematic and get away with it.

“I think I’m missing something here,” Dawn was saying as they both trotted along behind him. “Boo, it’s a big scary jacket. I’m sure it’s way symbolic, but was it really worth school on Saturday?”

She was going to tell her, Spike knew. No one ever kept his secrets, never bothered to explain, so when Lydia gave it away to his once dearest friend, it was inevitable. “That coat belonged to the last Slayer Spike killed.”

“Oh.”

_Oh._

Spike took the stairs two by two back to the hallway, thinking nothing. He was killing this demon; they were getting Buffy home; he was making sure the Slayer realised how much of a sodding idiot she was leaping into portals to God knew where.

“You know…” Dawn was still talking, clattering up the stairs with Lydia behind him. “Is it really your place to tell me that? ‘Cause I’m not sure it is.”

Spike almost stumbled. He didn’t; just came to the doorway and pulled it back open, stalking between the lockers on the way back to Xander’s car.

“Sorry?” They weren’t jogging to keep up, behind them, just walking. Well, Lydia paused as she said that particular line, then remembered to keep going.

Dawn was railing on the Watcher nonetheless. “Well, you come here, you know? You act like you know us,” she said. “You keep looking at Spike like he’s your pet or George Clooney or something. Like, because you’ve read a load of stuff in books, you’re part of the gang. But you’re not.”

She could be nothing if not cruel, this Summers girl. Spike turned his head back over his shoulder, pausing as they came to the front doorway. “Dawn, that’s enough,” he said without thinking, opening the glass door for them. The Principal would get over the pane he’d broken in.

Of course, Dawn stared at him, like she’d never heard something so unreasonable. Spike raised his eyebrows, not having it. He glanced at Lydia, who looked chastened, her cheeks bright pink, but also a little bit like she fancied him for being her saviour. Really, it was almost enough to make Spike roll his eyes, but he didn’t – for the sake of getting the best out of everyone in this war.

The moment when Dawn had an opportunity to flip out passed right on by. She ducked her head and strode by his arm, through the door. “Whatever,” she grumbled and Lydia followed her, out of linoleum and onto the paving.

Spike followed them to the car, breathing in the night air and wishing he felt more like killing. _Whatever._ Oh yeah, he was back. Almost.

\-- _later_ \--

It was touch and go, what was going to happen when they found this demon. Xander let everyone out near the Bronze and, as luck would have it, there was a scream out in the distance.

Spike was quickest to follow it. It was a reasonable way off, away from the main drag and into one of the more rundown residential areas of Sunnydale. It was full of nice townhouses from the 20s, this part of town, but most of them were abandoned now: too close to the Hellmouth, really. He and Buffy had had their first shag in one which had to be about two blocks away from where he was now, honing in on the demon, who, frankly, looked lost.

There wasn’t much preshow, when it came down to it. Spike had never been one for finesse, and he far preferred fighting things that were sentient enough to get wound up. He charged towards the beast, aiming for the back of it but getting the front as it turned around. The tails of his duster flew behind him like sweet, comforting batwings as the pair of them crunched into asphalt. The demon roared, but Spike hit it – not with a fist but with an elbow, throwing all his weight to smash at one of the thing’s tusks.

For a moment, the thing was silent, but then it was throwing Spike back with one of its giant, superpowered arms.

“Spike!” That was Dawn crying out, and he felt the first frisson of real emotion in this fight as his eyes caught the shape of her.

What the hell was she doing here? Spike asked himself. The others were still a way behind; Xander had been going too heavy on the doughnuts and Anya was in inappropriate footwear. Lydia, the only one with half a brain among them, probably, looked like she didn’t want to interfere. The crossbow wound, just torn open again in Spike’s side, that agreed with her.

Dawn, however… Dawn was coming closer. “Get _back_ , you mad bint,” he tried to shout at her, but then the demon was roaring again and Spike was distracted.

It came rushing in under the light of a lamp post, the shadow of it as long and as dark as midnight. Spike pulled himself up, quickly, and remembered what it was like to panic because there was no way out.

Dawn was shouting loud enough to wake the next apocalypse. “Godammit, take this!” And then she was shoving an axe in front of him, blade first. Spike took it high up the haft, not looking at her as he ran forward, no other way to distract the beast. “Just don’t freaking die,” she added, like it was necessary.

Going in low, Spike couldn’t pull a swing before the beast clobbered him in the head. The pain was familiar, and he knew he should have got a rush, but he didn’t. Determined, though, he didn’t let himself fall, just ducked with the force of the blow and thudded out a turn into the soles of his boots. When he came around, the axe had a kick of its own momentum, and that, he had to say, did feel good as he went with it, slamming the blade straight into the demon’s lower chest.

About six inches of the steel sank in, got stuck. The demon seemed to lose something – and Spike knew the feeling. He took the advantage, hopping up the curb behind the creature as it stumbled forward. This would have been a moment when Spike would have liked to let the thing go, if he’d had a choice, because the fight was won and it seemed like there was little joy to be had.

Yet with his coat heavy on his shoulders, the fate of all of them and Buffy not least, Spike knew what he had to do. He called on it, that part of him that enjoyed this, and snatched the demon’s head before it could recover from the wound. It was oozing black gore; it was roaring in pain; it was alive and fighting for the cause.

With a short breath and that particular tension in his muscles, Spike wrenched his arms around and snapped the demon’s neck.

It looked easy when it happened, that was the thing. Taking the life from something, it could be easy, but snapping the neck of something like this always hurt and it always left the echo of the motion in his forearms. He had a killer’s hands, and he could take it, but it was difficult these days to accept just how simple all this was.

The demon fell forward as it died, lay down at Spike’s feet like he was a god. For a moment, Spike let himself stare at the body, seeing himself.

.


	6. PART TWO (breakfasts)

> “Why are you showing me this? To understand him? To prove to me that _you_ do? There was a chance for this before and he didn’t want it, so I don’t need for you to make it all add up now. This is about me. It’s about getting this done.”

  


**I**

After everything, the next day was Sunday, so Buffy didn’t set her alarm. Usually it didn't really matter, because she woke up without it anyway, but that day she ended up waking late. It was disconcerting. The kitchen had already been raided by the time she came downstairs; it sounded like Lydia and Nigel were training the other girls outside.

Willow was there, though, and she was just the person Buffy needed to see. “Hey Will,” she said, smiling when her friend shot the greeting back. It didn’t seem like she was holding too much of a grudge from the night before. Nor did it seem that she could sense what had happened afterwards… Remaining cool, then, Buffy asked her, “What do you know about dragons?”

A spoonful of Raisin Bran lifted from the bowl and up towards her mouth, Willow looked back at her nervously. “Dragons?” she asked, before taking the mouthful. “Wha-abuff-m?”

Buffy waited, settling herself down onto the opposite stool.

“What about them?” Willow repeated once she’d swallowed. “Sorry,” she added unnecessarily, going for her orange juice.

Buffy waved a hand at her, trying to figure out if she wanted breakfast for herself. She hadn’t had much sleep, even with the extra. “Oh, you know,” she said, looking at the spread in front of them. It was attractive, in the morning light. “I mean, did you know they exist as, like, not just scary hellbeasts but with the mythology and everything?” Buffy didn’t feel hungry, though, looking at the food: all she saw was what would be mess by the evening.

“Oh, sure,” Willow replied. Buffy looked up, and the other woman was nodding eagerly; she started scooping up the remainders of cereal. “They’re demons, but they’ve had about as much contact with humans as vampires.” She paused, contemplating her spoonful for a moment. “It makes them real interesting,” she added, before taking her final mouthful, munching through it.

Buffy nodded, thinking as Willow finished her breakfast. Most of the stories she remembered, dragons didn’t much get along with humans, let alone help them out. She might have done it a bunch of times, but as the Slayer it was always difficult trying to figure out how to make deals with demons.

“Why d’you ask, anyway?” Willow continued eventually, tonguing at her teeth with only a half-empty glass of orange juice left in her hand. Mock-earnestly, she asked, “Didya pull a sword out of the stone, Buffy, when none of us were looking?”

Buffy grinned, glad to see humour rather than nerves in her friend’s eyes – always. Maybe she really didn’t have a grudge. “No,” Buffy admitted, leaning on the countertop. She wasn’t hungry, she decided. “It’s just…” she began, uncertain how much to give away. “Travers said something last night, about dragon magic, and I…” Smiling, it was for once easy to tell the truth. “I was curious,” Buffy told Willow, meeting her eyes. “Spike –” Buffy cut into her herself at the flicker in Willow’s expression. _Ix-nay on the Ike-spay, I guess…_ She tried again, “I heard it was dangerous, but I wanted to ask someone who might have a better idea…”

“Oh, I can do _that,_ ” Willow said, once she’d taken it in. Putting down her glass and its half-inch of juice with a clunk, she slipped down from her stool and promised, “Just give me a second; I have some notes upstairs somewhere, I’ll go get them.”

Startled, Buffy wasn’t sure what to say as Willow hurried out of the room. It was nice of her, to go and get notes, but Buffy hadn’t really expected it – more like a conversation about whatever Will could remember. It seemed as though Willow was still thrilled to be needed, as nervous as she might be around magic and the First, or even Buffy herself, the same as always.

Buffy wondered if she should feel bad for exploiting that, or if she should feel bad for not using it more.

Nonetheless, she didn’t much time to think about it. Just as the energy had fallen in the room – Willow gone into the dining room and presumably up the stairs, leaving silence behind her – Buffy heard a creak.

She jumped, her whole upper body turning backwards to follow her head.

The basement door was ajar, squeaking as it opened another couple of inches.

Her startled tinglies dissolving into slightly different ones, Buffy hopped down from her stool and crossed the small distance to the door. Taking the knob in her hand, she put her head around the jamb.

“What are you doing up here?” she asked, because sure enough there was Spike, standing far enough back onto the stairs that the light didn’t reach him. So much for forgetting about him.

“Is she gone?” Spike asked, ignoring her, looking past her head. It was like he was still there in the night before, in awe of her and not so angry.

“It’s morning,” Buffy insisted, ignoring him along with everything he did to her insides. “And,” she said, because it was important, “this kitchen is East-facing.”

After a moment their eyes met. Buffy smiled. “Heard you and Red talking,” Spike went on, more relaxed; self-deprecating. “Couldn’t make out what the chat was.”

With a sigh, Buffy tossed a glance behind her. “Yeah, well…” she explained, straining her ears to make sure all was well in the garden. “She’s coming back soon and she’s gonna wonder why you’re awake.”

Spike had no response to that, it seemed, but it didn’t send him back into the dark. Instead, he took a step closer, filling Buffy’s senses.

“Go back to sleep,” she suggested, half wishing that she could do the same. _I have to make up with other people._

Spike still said nothing, just looked down his nose and touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek.

It was a year ago; that was all Buffy could think. Someone had found a time machine and it was a year ago. The challenge in how Spike was looking at her and the way he filled up her space – the way her stomach was fluttering with the secret that lay between them, with the uncertainty of what Spike would do about it… It was a struggle to keep her composure, looking back at him, up a little.

She grazed her fingers on the leather of his belt, not breaking eye-contact. She was to right of the buckle, far from danger, but it was fun all the same. “Wills is actually coming straight back,” she whispered, because she had no idea what to say. She hadn’t planned on seeing Spike until later that afternoon, and then she’d thought she might have come up with something. After last night – this was all very much like the daytime.

There was a moment when she thought Spike would kiss her. “Well,” he said, leaning forward a little further. But then he came further forward and put his head next to hers, “Can’t blame me for trying.”

With the quickest peck to her earrings, then, Spike was pulling backwards and vanishing like a wraith. A snickering wraith, albeit.

It was her fault, Buffy knew as she watched him go. Her body leaned after him, but she didn’t follow. She couldn’t.

 _How are you?_ she wanted to ask, even though she knew those words were not for her. _How can you…?_

After a little while later, Willow was calling from the dining room, “He-ey!”

Buffy turned around, pulling her hand to her chest as she shut the door behind her. It was like every time they had forcibly held a door closed against a demon, only in this case the demon was her personal life. For a change.

“I got my notes,” Willow added, as she came into view, a huge ring-binder clutched in her arms. Taking in the sight in front of her she paused, frowning. “Buffy?” she asked.

“I thought I heard the washer beep,” Buffy said quickly, coming back over to the breakfast table, putting her mind back to business. “Turns out, it was a false alarm. Still rumbling.”

“Right…” Willow said suspiciously. There was a harshness to her now, the sort of thing Buffy hadn’t wanted to see. “And I would believe that if I _didn’t_ know who else lived down there?” she asked, dumping her notes on the countertop.

Thankfully, this moment for true confessions was broken by Andrew storming in from the outside porch, pouring bright, deadly morning light across the whole room. “… and why can’t I train with the girls?” he was whining, loudly. “I don’t wanna die any more than they do!”

Andrew was followed by Anya, who looked as exasperated as Buffy immediately felt. “You ask annoying questions,” she explained, “and you fall over your own feet.”

“This is so unfair,” Andrew replied, inevitably stumbling over his own toes to appeal to Anya directly. They both seemed completely oblivious to Buffy and Willow’s presence in the room, which on balance Buffy thought was probably a good thing. “It's discrimination! ‘Cause I’m – it’s because I was evil, isn’t it?”

“It’s not,” Anya replied, arms by her side. “Really.”

“Then it’s – it’s because I’m a man,” Andrew exclaimed, turning away again. Buffy sighed, catching Willow’s eye across the counter. “Where’s Xander? He’ll understand…”

“Oh no you don’t.” As Buffy rolled her eyes, Anya took hold of Andrew’s shoulder and berated him. “Xander’s rebuilding the coffee table and you are _not_ to disturb him. He has hammering to do in the sweaty sunshine and I’m gonna…”

“Gee,” Buffy asked Willow, turning away from this scene and intending to ignore it entirely. “D’you think it’s the oestrogen in this house, or has someone let off a hormone bomb?”

Willow’s gaze was still drifted over Buffy’s shoulder. “Huh?” she asked, before she tuned back into their conversation. At first she looked a little hurt, like Buffy was saying something about her and Kennedy, or at least that was what Buffy figured. Then, however, she seemed to remember her previous line of attack. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, in something like a challenge. “You tell me.”

Anya and Andrew continued to row while Buffy looked back at Willow, trying to figure out what to say. There wasn’t much to tell, really, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell it.

“Are those your notes?” Buffy asked eventually, nodding at the big red file. Willow glanced down, distracted. “There’s so many of them.”

“Oh, sure,” Willow replied, turning open the worn cardboard cover. She seemed slightly less excited about them than she had a few minutes ago. The folder was stuffed with colourful dividers and a jumble of white and yellow file paper. Almost certainly, there was a system. “Haven’t you seen this before? I call it the Rosenberg Codex,” she explained, smiling Buffy’s way, only a little brittle. “’Cause, see, it’s all bound together…” Thumbing through the leaves to a particular section with a purple separator, she added, “And it’s by me, you know.”

Really, the sight of it gave Buffy the willies just as much as any of the other unreadably long books she’d encountered. Still, she knew this was the moment to play the supportive friend who wasn’t at all terrified by this sign of compulsive organisation. “It looks great, Will,” she enthused.

“It came to me one day, you know, back when we were researching Glory?” Willow continued, almost sounding like it was cheering her up. She worked her thumb through the purple section while Buffy shifted in her chair. “We did all that research in high school, but we never kept any notes… We must have wasted so much time, going through the same books over and over.”

 _Glory?_ Anya and Andrew seemed to have left now; the kitchen felt almost small. Buffy wasn’t sure she liked looking at the concrete evidence for two years of demon fighting. It was bad enough on her own body.

“I mean, I’ve had to modify my categories a little as I’ve gone along, but now at least I know what I’ve read and what it’s about and it’s come in so useful…”

When she reached a particular page, Willow paused. Buffy said nothing, trying to read the tiny rows of Willow’s perfectly proportioned round handwriting. She couldn’t make anything out; she wondered what Spike was doing.

“Hey, here we go!” Willow exclaimed, her finger pointing to a line that looked like any other. It was on a white page, written in blue and underlined with a thin stroke of red pen. She looked up, catching Buffy’s eye before she looked back down to read. Buffy listened uncomfortably. “ _Incantatio dracontea_ , the Song of the Serpent,” she said with due reverence. “Or, you know, dragon magic. Huh.”

“What?” Buffy asked, leaning forward as Willow frowned.

“Oh, Buffy,” Willow said, looking up. Her eyes looked sad. “It _is_ dangerous. Like, changes the nature of who you are dangerous.”

“What’s that mean?” Buffy asked, a frown crossing her own face. She was resistant to the idea that this couldn’t be a way forward. Who was she anyway? Enough things had changed her over the years she wasn’t actually sure how much of Buffy there was left.

With a tight smile, as if she knew exactly what Buffy was getting at, Willow looked back to the folder. “It’s elemental,” she explained, still mostly looking down. “I mean, obviously. Most things are, really, when it comes down to it, but… This is strong.”

“How strong?” Buffy pushed her, feeling the power curling inside of her – the way she did sometimes. Couldn’t that be a match?

With a sigh, Willow met her eyes before looking off towards the backdoor. “So, everything’s connected, right?” she explained as though it was a lesson long-learned. “And when stuff isn’t going loopy, everything’s in balance. People,” she continued, pointing between the two of them, “especially magical people like us, we get caught in the centre of all that. It’s this weird species-ist thing, or maybe it’s just about the particular kind of magic we can access, but we’re a focus for that balance, like all that quack-medicine humours stuff. If we have balance, we can do whatever we want, turn things around us. If we don’t…”

Watching the faraway look enter her friend’s eyes, Buffy wondered if Willow was thinking about the only one in their group who’d had any sort of balance, who as far as Buffy knew had tried to point these things out to Willow on quite a few occasions. “So where do the dragons fit in?” she asked, because if there was one thing she knew, it was how not to dwell.

“Um…” Willow shook her head, glancing back to Buffy. “So, right, well, dragons are demons, obviously,” she said, her voice strong again. “And demons are strange, ‘cause they kind of all have their own places in the big scheme of this magical, you know –” She turned her hand through the air, like she was stirring something, as though that would make it clearer. “– network thing. Some are more one way, some are more another…”

“And?” Buffy asked, her forehead tight with confusion. Faith and experience taught her that if Willow could make it to the end of her babble, then the point might become apparent.

Looking again to the backdoor, like it would offer her some sort of escape, Willow explained. “Well, you get dragons like we would call dragons, who look like in the movies and the romances and things, but in magical terms they’re really just a category of demons.”

Buffy wondered if Willow had all of this in her notes, or if she was remembering it. Certainly she didn’t seem to be reading it off the page. Possibly Buffy needed a ring-binder of her own.

“And…” Willow swallowed, smiling again like she didn’t want to say it, or she was imagining something. “What they are is the extreme. You know? They’ll be balanced out among themselves, with one fire dragon somewhere and some ice dragon somewhere else – at least, that's is the theory,” she interrupted herself, glancing at Buffy as though to make this point extra clear. “No one’s ever seen them all, so… But,” she relented, “if humans are the focus of balance as individuals, well, dragons are the opposite.”

Buffy waited, trying to put it all together. She’d never cared about the theory of magic, really, though obviously there were things that could go wrong. Willow was the evidence of that. It was warm in the kitchen, but Buffy felt pretty zen about it. Did that make her a balanced person?

“So,” Willow finished, as though she really didn’t want to say it. “The way dragons do magic is different. Way different. I thought…” She looked down again at her notes, tracing some key words with her index finger; Buffy could only make out what was possibly ‘catastrophic’. “There’s no way of meeting them in the middle. You do a dragon spell, and you’ll be pulled right in their direction, all the way to the end.”

Maybe, just maybe, Buffy thought she was figuring this out. This would be like what the Shadowmen wanted, but worse.

Still, at least it wouldn’t be demon essence she was sucking in. “With the First, though,” she asked, pulling Willow’s attention back towards her. There was worry on Willow’s face, which Buffy tried to ignore. “Say we could do something with, what, a good dragon? Do they exist? Like, a holy dragon?”

Willow snorted, the way Buffy’s father had used to when people called American sparkling wine champagne. Her voice was full of scorn as she remarked, “Holy magic is just what people call good magic when they want to avoid the moralising undertones. It’s like evil magic and black.”

For a moment, Buffy was silent, not entirely sure how to square this particular point with all the black magic Willow had willingly conjured in the past. For all of them. “But would it work?” she asked eventually, wanting to be sure of this point, at least, before she even contemplated it.

Unfortunately, that was the moment the backdoor gave Willow exactly the escape she seemed to want. It came in the form of Kennedy, who came strolling through with a crowd of Potentials behind her. It looked like Caridad had won shotgun for the shower.

As they swarmed inside, Buffy looked around. They ignored her, most of them, when they weren’t swerving to avoid her or else shooting her with evils. “Is training over?” she asked a group of them reflexively, as they raided her cupboards for glasses and ganged around the sink.

One of them cast a glance at her; the others laughed, getting on with their task.

Stung, Buffy looked back to Willow, but she was gazing adoringly at Kennedy, who right now was flushed and smiling. This smile on Willow’s face, that was real, Buffy realised. Much more real than the ones Willow had been giving her.

The couple kissed sweetly and Buffy’s gaze bounced away from it, back over to the now empty door. It seemed as though answers would have to wait for another day.

“Everyone’s doing fine, by the way,” Kennedy shot acidly at the back of Buffy’s head, just as she rose to walk away.

The girls by the sink were laughing again, so Buffy didn’t even turn back. She paused for a moment, unsure what to do, wishing she could escape through the other way out, downstairs.

To her side, Willow was saying, “That’s not fair…” but it was only half-heartedly. When Buffy glanced back, she was smoothing tendrils of Kennedy’s hair out of her eyes, like she’d done nothing wrong.

Unable to stay and not sure what she wanted, Buffy left the kitchen to the girls and headed the way they’d come – into the sun. She tried to catch Willow’s eye, but didn’t quite make it. “I'm gonna...”

* * *

Lydia and Nigel were conferring at the end of the garden, the sunlight only highlighting the red burn that had come to rest now on Lydia’s nose and cheeks. It had been a long morning, presumably, though it wasn’t anything like midday. The V of her sports top was burned as well.

She looked different out here, this Watcher. Her ponytail was slightly undone and her workout clothes were almost like a normal person’s. She was pretty, Buffy figured, and soft like every potential Slayer would want their leader to be.

When she caught Buffy’s eyes, her expression hardened with the memory of the night before. “I’ll meet you back inside,” she said to Nigel, who turned around as Lydia made to leave.

As the other woman walked by, Buffy thought about saying something. Everything already seemed long ago, to her at least, but it was clear Lydia didn’t try for anything like so short a memory. What she was supposed to say, though, Buffy didn’t know, so she just avoided Lydia’s eyes and waited until she’d gone.

When Buffy raised her head again, Nigel was looking at her – sympathetically. He was also looking pretty worked out, Buffy realised, and it made her wonder whether she’d lost something, this past couple of weeks, getting out of sync with the Potentials’ rhythm of physical exhaustion.

Not that she wasn’t exhausted. That was pretty much a given. But she felt like the day was just beginning, when on Nigel’s face it seemed like it was almost over.

“How are they all doing?” Buffy asked the Watcher.

“Well,” he replied, with a short, proper smile.

“Good,” Buffy replied, not sure if she was approving or correcting him.

There was a nervous look in Nigel’s eyes, which didn’t sit well with Buffy as the light breeze rustled around them. Eventually, though, he sighed, and spoke as though he’d given up waiting for Buffy to continue her side of the conversation. “Some of them lack co-ordination. We were thinking,” he added, “Robin Wood might allow them to train at the school. Tennis or another racquet sport should be enjoyable enough, and be good for their sense of competition.”

Buffy nodded. “I’ll ask him.” It was a good idea. One she never would have thought of.

“Other than that…” Nigel said after another few moments’ silence. He looked wiped. “I think that’s everything.”

“Great,” Buffy replied. It wasn’t actually. Seconds more and Nigel was leaving her on the grass, as if she’d come out here for the contemplation.

A couple of birds twittered, and Buffy was struck by the question of what these girls would want from her, what they all wanted from her. What it would take. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

The sun was hot on the back of her neck; burning.

* * *

It was easy enough, later, to find a basket of laundry that needed washing. Buffy’s whole house was full of dirty laundry, or so it seemed most of the time. Pulling a basket together from the hamper in her room was enough to justify a load, and by the time she’d gone down the landing and the stairs, at least three other people had given her things to wash.

OK, so it was Andrew’s job to get stuff clean; OK, so people usually left things downstairs and let Spike do it. Since everyone was still pissed off with Buffy, she figured they would see it as penitence.

Mostly, it got her downstairs at four o’clock in the afternoon, about the time that Spike usually woke up. It was difficult to be up in the house today, with the way everyone was looking at her.

Her timing was right, thankfully. Spike was awake. Kicked back on his bed, to be precise, with one arm behind his head and a book perched on his chest, one knee cocked towards the ceiling. If he hadn’t been wearing clothes, it would have been a very familiar position. Somehow it made this whole thing seem easier, in a way that it hadn’t before.

“So,” Buffy said, as she reached the bottom of the stairs and was crossing the floor to the washer. She figured she might as well run it anyway, even while she replayed a little scenario from their past. “You never told me what your excuse was.”

Spike looked over, curious as he shut his book. “For what?” he asked.

Shrugging, Buffy kept it nonchalant. “You know – for trying to see me.”

“Need an excuse now, do I?” Spike made no move to get up, not yet, just shifted so he could look at her better. At least, Buffy assumed that was the reason.

She crossed her arms, leaning back against the machine behind her. The clothes were on top of it, and probably should have been going in, but this was much more fun. It was… Familiar. Distracting. Easy. Probably a little bit wrong. “Maybe,” she answered Spike’s question, resisting that line of thought. “At least at ten AM.”

For a moment Spike said nothing, eyes raking over her like he was trying to suss her out. Buffy just waited, willing to gamble that he would come to her – which he did, with a concerted sproing of his mattress as he swung out of bed. As he approached, she raised her chin to keep looking at him in the eye, but gave no other visible reaction. He was watching her, but she was watching him, and it was good to see him move.

“Is this yours, then?” Spike asked when he was up in her personal space, the words shadowed by a particularly seductive drawl. He nodded his head over her shoulder, one arm around behind her to tip the basket into view. “The mighty Slayer does washing?” As Buffy glanced around, wondering if _this_ was actually the moment to put the washer on, all nonchalant, Spike tutted. “Should’ve known you couldn’t stay away.”

“Oh please,” Buffy riposted, as their eyes met again. God, this was distracting, for real. How could she have forgotten? Parts of her were feeling giddy; parts of her were feeling that first hint of implosion. All of her was feeling better. Was that bad? “Could your ego inflate any bigger?”

“Dunno,” was Spike’s reply to that, like he felt it too. He let go of the basket, his arm brushing against hers as he twirled a finger through the end of her ponytail. Buffy looked at him and he raised his eyebrows. “Wanna find out?” he asked, his voice light again.

A laugh bubbled out of her, because that was kind of funny. Spike grinned, half a laugh down his nose, and then it was easy to lean forward from the washer, put her hands around his head and kiss him. Obviously, in a very war-appropriate way, without tongue even if they weren’t entirely close-mouthed, but it was still the escape it had always been.

What she was doing here, Buffy didn’t really know. Today was a washout, as far she could figure. The girls were trained, likely ready for some sort of strategy lesson from Travers later, and she was at a loose end. In most people’s eyes, surplus to requirements. Willow and Althanea had their heads back together on the wards, Xander was still rebuilding splinters into something functional, Giles was away, as usual, and she was…

When the kiss ended, she was being held by the hips, Spike’s thumbs through her belt loops in a way that Buffy thought acknowledged pretty well how they’d been intimate enough with each other at one time. They didn’t need more than this, did they? To get through the next few months?

“Hello gorgeous,” was what Spike said, like their conversation here was only beginning, his voice everything that was wicked and tempting. His eyes were lit with passion, understanding, that other thing… It was as though she hadn’t just come downstairs and berated him.

For a few seconds, Buffy was happy to be wrapped up in it. Then she felt the grip of reality claw her back to Earth. “Stop it,” she told him, feeling the giddiness sink into the black pit of her stomach. “You can’t be nice to me.” It wasn’t his place, just like this wasn’t hers. “Everyone hates me today.”

Cocking his head to one side, Spike appeared to contemplate the idea. “Well,” he replied, scrunching up his nose, never losing the light in his eyes, “thanks to the sound hiding you gave _me_ , I’m not all that inclined to follow the crowd anymore.”

Buffy snorted, generally relieved as she looked down. “Like you were ever.”

“It’s a fair cop.”

Their eyes met again, and Buffy had to take a breath, looking away before she kissed a vampire just for being nice to her. She let her hands fall from Spike’s chest, using them so she could hop back to sit on the washing machine. As she glanced next to her, Spike took the hint – hopping up beside her while she shuffled to accommodate him.

“I guess it’s not true anyway,” Buffy said while they were manoeuvring. She put her hand on Spike’s knee, drawing his gaze back to hers. This was better, wasn’t it? Talking was better. “Willow’s been nice to me.”

“That’s big of her,” Spike drawled, his leg twitching once under her hand. It didn’t twitch away. “What’d she have to say?”

Buffy looked off into the basement, glad to have this contact with Spike, their thighs and dangling legs brushed against each other – Spike’s hands splayed behind him for support; his left well into her half of the machine, so her shoulder brushed his upper arm. “I asked her about dragon magic. I wanted to know…”

“You wanted to know if a second opinion would tell you any different,” Spike interrupted, irritably – but he was still there.

Across the basement was Spike’s bed, the sheets all rumpled from his reading session. Really, Buffy wondered how well Spike ever slept, all alone in his camping bed. He seemed to be awake as often as her, much of the time. “It wasn’t that entirely. I guess…”

As she trailed off, Spike sighed. Apparently he was happier than she was to figure out her motives, because he told them both, “No. You’ve just already decided that you’re going through with it and want all the intel you can get.”

That didn’t sit right either, not completely. “Maybe,” Buffy accepted, offering Spike a conciliatory smile. “Maybe not.” She didn’t tell him how the thought of it scared her, the idea of this transformative magic.

Quite possibly, she didn’t need to. Spike’s expression softened as she looked at him. “Thought you weren’t going to try protect everyone,” he said softly, neither an accusation or a challenge. “Not this time.”

“They’re just girls, Spike,” Buffy couldn’t help but say, feeling like she was apologising. The scene in the kitchen earlier, it had stung at the time – but now she was over it, and the whole thing seemed so juvenile. “Scared and angry girls.”

Buffy was definitely leaning into Spike now, even if her gaze had slipped to the wall. His arm was almost around her and it was enough as he said nothing.

Really, it was hard for Buffy to say this to his face. “Maybe they have the potential,” she conceded, “but the way you find that out is when someone sticks a stake in your hand and sends you out to die.” All she could feel was the rage from the night before; the frustration; the sickening feeling of inevitability. “And…” Why was it always about death? “We’ve seen it – we’ve both seen it – how sometimes that works, but I don’t know if that’s what I’m supposed to be doing anymore. Lydia… And Nigel, really…”

“Maybe it’s time to take them out again,” Spike suggested lightly, as though there was still a way to solve this. “We could go out like last time, find a nest somewhere, get volunteers to come and clear it up. They’ll do fine and boost morale for the rest of them.”

It was a good suggestion. Buffy looked at Spike again, hoping he could see the gratitude in her eyes. “Are you asking me out on a recon date?” she asked, because she couldn’t let him get away with that part completely.

Spike smirked, and all Buffy could wonder was whether he ever would’ve gotten his ego back if she hadn’t kissed him. Although… There was a softness in this particular smirk, somehow in the way he held himself, which had never really been there before. “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” he said anyway. “If it distracts you from turning yourself into some holy dragon conduit and, I dunno, scourging out everything vaguely nasty inside you.”

Buffy felt the matching grin that crept across her face. She still remembered Willow’s face from earlier. ( _It’s strong…_ ) Nonetheless, she knew she could forget about it. Delaying the inevitable? She could do that. She was an expert in that. “You’re so sweet,” she said.

* * *

The night hadn’t long fallen, of course, before they were kissing again. About a block from 1630, one of the streetlights was out, and none of the surrounding houses seemed to have residents inside. The darkness was total and Buffy was caught between a tree and a hard place, like she had been so many times before, her hands still fisted around the collar of Spike’s coat from when she had dragged him to her.

Hands were smoothing along her hips again, not groping her ass, not lifting her up, not working their way under her top, not working their way anywhere. It was at odds with the hungry sweep of Spike’s tongue; the odd desire she had to gulp him down and keep him inside her for always. Buffy’s lips tingled every instant they weren’t fully crushed against his skin; she whimpered every time she inhaled and the bright, earthy taste of him rushed right up her nose to circle in the back of her throat. It annoyed her how he didn’t seem to have it so bad, given how he was the one in love with _her_ and she was the one…

A car drove by, its lights heavy and the roar of it bright across her conscience.

“Guh!” Buffy exclaimed, popping the pair of them apart with one forcible extension of her elbows. In his surprise, Spike’s clenched his hands around her hips, pressing his thumbs into the crease at the top of her thighs. Buffy wanted nothing more than to noodle her legs around him until he begged for mercy, or at least just have him open her up. “This is your fault!” she accused, casting that muscle memory away.

“ _My_ fault?” Spike shot back. He let go, but it didn’t help. Here in front of her he was all shades of blue, his skin a deep dusky grey and his eyes the same shade as the open night sky. Buffy wanted new memories with him. Thousands of them. She wanted new memories of herself. “ _You’re_ the one who’s all hot little hands and come hither eyes.” He glanced down between them, his own hands on his hips, his gaze pointing to where she could feel the ready signal of what her body wanted.

Like the signs on him weren’t even more obvious. “Right,” Buffy put him straight, glancing down for her own little look at the evidence. “Like you weren’t sidling up against me from the moment we left the house.” Yep. Those jeans looked exactly how she remembered them. “Looking at me! And… And saying all those flirty little…”

When Buffy glanced up again, she was surprised to see how much naked lust could be written into one vampire’s expression. Spike’s jaw was tense and his eyes burned into hers. It made her heart pound.

At that moment, it would have been easy to give in. Quite where it would have taken them, Buffy didn’t know, but they had been here so many times she could practically feel the force of him inside her, the rough bark against her back and the cries that would erupt from her throat.

Breaking the habit of a lifetime, though, Buffy resisted the urge to tip them both over the edge. Instead, she let Spike’s collar go, turning it right and smoothing leather lapels against his chest.

Spike shuddered, taking both her hands in his and kissing her right palm as his eyes fell closed. When he opened them again, he was himself. They were both themselves, standing firm in the night with her back against a tree.

“How did we get here?” Buffy asked, not meaning to sound plaintive, but not so good with not doing the things she shouldn’t.

Spike shook his head, holding her hands tightly in his. “No idea,” he replied, casting his mouth into a wry little grin. “Got a nasty habit of never looking back – but,” he added. “I think the plan was to recon this patrol.”

 _Never looking back._ Now Buffy knew that wasn’t true. She could remember Althanea’s words about Spike’s trigger, about how it was psychological. Possibly he kept those memories bottled up, but they were there, stuck in his peripheral vision. Offering a watery smile of her own, however, she tried to forget that particular fact. She didn’t want them to argue. “Guess we shouldn’t have joked about the date, right?”

Spike frowned, like she was denying them. He stepped back and ignored her last point. “You should go,” he said seriously. “Get the girls out here. I’ll…”

He paused, and Buffy wanted to seize on it, interrupt him, but she didn’t; the moment passed.

With a sigh – a look like he was onto her – Spike realised it was inevitable. “I’ll go look up about this dragon,” he said. Then he left.

.


	7. breakfasts II

Patrol was… Well, it didn’t really happen. Buffy did the route around the cemeteries, looking for nests she could bring the girls to, but like everything else in Sunnydale these days it seemed the usual demon pestilence was running at half-staff. She found nothing. Obviously she still staked a few fledglings and she stalked one guy who looked older – but he led her to the Bronze and it quickly became a choice between staking him or letting this evening’s drunk co-ed get killed.

The bouncer was there, the one she’d talked to about Spike before, when he’d been killing again. Buffy thought about asking him if Spike had been by that night, if going to the Bronze was what it meant to seek out the dragon. She didn’t want to look pathetic, though, so she just acted it and went home.

Spike was still gone at 4am, when she gave in and retreated to her rest.

The next morning, Buffy was up early, ready for another school week. The Potentials were outside with the Watchers while she and Dawn had breakfast.

At least, Dawn was having breakfast, chowing on her Wheaties. Buffy had OJ.

“So,” Buffy asked after a swallow. It didn’t taste particularly good, food, but she knew that was a thing that happened to her when the stress came. “What’s the plan for learning stuff today?”

As she also swallowed, Dawn shrugged. She clattered her spoon back into the empty bowl and pushed it away on the counter. “Kit’s super sure that Mr. Figueira’s gonna give us a pop quiz,” she said. “She thinks he has a tell.”

“Really?” Buffy replied. Mr. Figueira was… Geography? OK, when she even worked at the same school it was embarrassing she couldn’t remember. She was a lousy sister. “What is it?”

“Oh, you know those stupid clip-ons that make his glasses sunglasses?” Dawn continued as though Buffy actually did, which was sweet of her. It had been months now, but Buffy still found it creepy to go into the teachers’ lounge. She preferred spending lunch at her desk or off campus. “When we have class at the end of the day he always snaps them on, but Kit thinks he plays with them more when he’s planning something, like he’s enjoying himself.” She gestured. “Flickety-flickety- _hmm-I’m-gonna-set-a-pop-quiz_ -click.”

Revelling in evil? It sounded like Buffy’s type. She raised her eyebrows, “And have you studied for this pop quiz?”

In the glow of the morning sun, Dawn looked angelic. Also, guilty. “Not exactly,” she began slowly, before she quickly sped up, “but I spent all of last night reading this monk’s account of evil’s manifestations during the middle ages, and that was in French and Nigel helped me with the vocabulary, so I figure when Mr. Fig asks me about the political system I can wing it? _Le Conseil des ministres est l’organe exécutif…_ ”

Buffy blinked at her. She’d forgotten Dawn was taking AP French.

_I guess the Watchers are doing that part of my life better too…_

The back door opened at that moment, and Buffy was extremely grateful for the save. “Hey! It’s Xander…” she said as she saw who came through the door. He looked – weirdly intense for a Monday morning. Anya was trotting behind him, pulling on his arm, which was extra weird. “Dawn, go get your stuff,” Buffy said, with a glance for her sister, mostly because it was the end of the sentence that started with heying Xander, but also because it seemed like she should be out of there.

Mostly looking grateful to escape Buffy’s inquisition, Dawn slipped down from the stool and left the kitchen.

“Buffy,” Xander said, inevitably. “We need to talk.”

All this time Buffy had been standing, so now she slipped into one of the spare counter chairs. “What about?” she asked warily, setting down her half-empty glass of orange juice.

“I’m telling you, lackbrain,” Anya interrupted as Xander opened his mouth. The insult was bizarrely affectionate. “You’re not gonna wanna hear it.”

Buffy tried to look quizzical, while Xander looked sheepish – before he glanced at Anya and the frown was back again. “OK,” he said, before he sighed. “So this is hard for me to tell you, but I’m your friend and friends tell each other stuff like this. I want you to know that this comes from a friendly place and we’re here for you.”

It was not clear what he was saying. Glancing between Xander’s earnest expression and Anya, who was rolling her eyes, Buffy wasn’t really sure what to think. “OK…”

“I know you’re probably gonna say it doesn’t matter,” her friend continued, raising his hands in a conciliatory way. “But I know you, and Willow said… And what I’m hoping is that it’s not something we have to worry about, you know, danger-wise – but…” Again, he looked to Anya, who gestured impatiently as if to say, _go ahead_ , as if she still thought the whole conversation was ridiculous. “But we were driving home last night, from the hardware store –”

“And the supermarket,” Anya butted in. When Buffy looked at her, she started busying herself by putting the milk away.

“– and we saw Spike.”

Really, Buffy was confused. She looked back to Xander. “OK…?”

“He was…” Xander set his jaw, like he was waiting for the backlash, sympathy in his eyes. “He was with a girl,” he finished. “They were… They were making out.”

“Wait – what?” Buffy said, before the words had sunk in. “Did you say…” Shock. This was shock, she was feeling. “ _Spike?_ And a _girl?_ ” It had better not have been…

“Oh, no,” Xander interrupted her immediately. “Not a Potential. I don't think, anyway.”

She hadn’t seen Spike since last night, was the first thing Buffy thought. She didn’t know where he was or if he’d even come home. Maybe he’d got impatient with her; maybe he’d been wound up and…

In an instant, she was imagining it, how she’d sat in this very kitchen with a glass of apple juice (trying for variety), while he’d been out. Maybe – maybe even at the Bronze – he’d picked up some girl and she’d taken him home. Only they hadn’t made it back all the way; he’d been so hungry for her that he crowded her up right on the street, grinned that wolfish grin he got before he…

In Buffy’s head, this girl looked a lot like a certain Watcher, which made her realise she was actually losing it.

“Hang on a second,” Buffy interrupted her own thoughts, while Xander remained silent, the pity still in his eyes. “You were driving home from SuperSave?”

Anya snorted, banging cupboards. “Yeah,” Xander confirmed, his voice soft with sympathy. “But Buffy…”

“But SuperSave closes at ten,” she pushed on, pointing at herself. “I was with Spike until eleven.”

Oh.

It was precisely the same moment, as far as Buffy could tell, when she and Xander figured it out. Her eyes widened as she watched his do the same and she knew, she knew she couldn’t accuse him of doing anything he shouldn’t have been doing.

“Seriously, Buffy?” was what Xander said. He looked so disappointed. “You and _Spike?_ ” For a moment, he looked speechless, just like Buffy felt, and then, “The guy tried to rape you.”

Everything in Buffy’s body seized up, the way it always did when she remembered. At some point, it was going to stop happening, at least Buffy figured so, but it turned out that that day was not today.

Nearly a year afterwards, at least, she was strong enough not to break Xander’s gaze. And so Buffy saw it, the split second when he said it, how the look crossed his face like he’d just pulled a particularly effective weapon. The look was gone a second later, chased away by regret, and Buffy couldn’t be sure Xander even knew what he was doing. It hurt, though, maybe more than the memory, which at least was not a present concern.

“Really, Xand?” was how Buffy’s mouth fought back, though, before the rest of her had even caught up. She was so far behind it. For this instant, the rest of the kitchen was an uncanny, disassociated soundstage around her. Xander’s face was like a picture, coming into focus; Anya a shimmer of movement. “Are you sure? ‘Cause, gee,” she spat, “you know, I think I might have forgotten otherwise, with so much suckiness to choose from last year.” 

Standing over the table, but not quite over her, Xander had the grace to look embarrassed. Anya yanked on his sleeve once, catching Buffy’s eye. From the expression on her face, she’d seen this coming. More than that, she knew and could recall just as well as Buffy did that there had been no cry for vengeance from the bathroom that night.

God, she could remember it. The shock, the fear, the rage that had then wrapped her up in its warm, shielding burn. By the time that had died and Xander had appeared, all Buffy had had was acceptance and this weird sense of loneliness. Partly because Spike had just finally proven himself to be everything she’d said him to be but never quite managed to feel – at least so she’d thought at the time – but also because she’d recognised even then that no one was ever going to get just how screwed things had got between them, to take them to that point.

“I’m sorry,” Xander said, finally, breaking into Buffy’s thoughts. He eased himself up onto one of the other stools, casting a glance towards the noise in the hallway before he spoke again. Someone was coming down the stairs, maybe Dawn, but they paused halfway and turned back like they’d forgotten something. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Xander looked at Anya, who widened her eyes like she was reminding Xand of something. In any case, from what Buffy could tell it they had talked about her, about this, which was just swell.

Ultimately, Buffy didn’t trust herself to say anything.

“I…” Xander began again, awkwardly. “I guess I never know how you can be so forgiving. I mean, Spike is…” He glanced at Anya before, earnestly, he looked at her again. “Even without everything going on with the First, the guy’s… He’s dangerous, Buffy.”

“I… I guess he is,” Buffy replied easily, eventually. She felt it burn inside her as Xander looked surprised. As a relationship prospect, she wasn’t entirely sure what she felt about it, but as far as they apocalypse was concerned? “I say that’s a good thing.”

He reeled back, her friend. Anya remained still, a frown on her face as she looked at the mess on the counter.

Buffy felt defensive, and it made words bubble up out of her. “You wanna know what’s going to beat this thing? It’s not safe. It’s not reasonable. OK,” she conceded, tapping her fingertips on the tabletop as she searched for words, “this thing with Spike, I didn’t plan it, but all of us, we _should_ –” she shoved forward, into her hands, trying to make Xander see. “We _should_ be dangerous.”

This time, though, for once, Xander didn’t rise to the bait. As grim as he’d looked before, he frowned, pausing a while before he replied, “I get that, Buffy, you know? I hear you.” For a moment he smiled, but then that quickly faded. “The thing is, I worry about you, and we’ve been here before. The undead comes back with a soul and you keep it a secret from your friends. And then you…”

“It’s not the same,” Buffy interrupted, keeping eye contact. Her voice was soft, though. Not least because if Spike was downstairs, she didn’t want him to hear this. “Spike’s not…” She swallowed, unable to resist looking away. “By the end of it, he wasn’t a threat to anyone but me. And even then… It’s not the same.”

“So sue me,” Xander replied, with equal and welcome gentleness, “but it wasn’t the rest of us that took the brunt of it the last time.”

The stairs clattered again, right at this moment, and seconds later Dawn was running into the kitchen, “Sorry! Sorry!” she breezed, panicking, hauling her shoulderbag with her. “I’m ready!”

All three of them reacted, turning to stare at her.

Dawn paused, looking between them. “What?” she asked nervously.

It was a big sister’s responsibility, Buffy realised, to tell a little sister things like this. Otherwise somebody else would. “Dawn,” she said, as straightforwardly as she could. Her sister’s eyes were wide. “I guess I should’ve told you, though it’s only really been a couple days and nobody else knows and it wasn’t a secret anyway – but…” Buffy confessed, “Spike and I may or may not be a thing.”

Seriously, this was ridiculous. Buffy hadn’t even talked to him about announcing it. And, crap, he’d been so pissed off about the thing with the soul that maybe…

“A thing that’s more of a thing than the thing you already were?” Dawn replied, interrupting Buffy’s thoughts. It made no sense, but it also did, and even without the sceptical look on Dawn’s face it made clear that this wasn’t entirely news. “Wow, TMI. Thanks, Buffy.”

Rolling her eyes, Buffy hopped down from the counter and raised her hands in surrender. “OK, whatever.” She scowled; Dawn smirked. “Let’s go.”

* * *

It went fine, that day. Most of it. The sky didn’t fall in and everything was going fine until she came home. The girls were on a break before whatever ridiculous entertainment Andrew had planned for the evening, so they were everywhere. Picking through the crowd room by room, it seemed as though nothing eventful had happened while she was gone, so Buffy eventually wound herself up in the dining room – where Willow and Althanea were working on the house wards.

Buffy sat down and they caught her up. Yes, the First was stronger than they had hoped. Yes, they were working on it. Yes, they had a few ideas about using the Hellmouth against its latest spawn, given how they were tapping into that dark energy anyway.

It didn’t sound altogether sensible, but that was where they were these days.

Eventually, Althanea left to make a cup of tea. That was when Willow glanced around, shuffled her chair forward and leaned in to whisper in a whisper that was probably meant to joke-angry, but mostly came across as pissed off, “How could you not tell me?”

“What?” Buffy asked in an equally low voice, though she was sort of able to guess. She leaned in as well; glanced around to check no one was paying attention.

Willow scoffed, “About you and Spike, duh?” She actually appeared annoyed. “What, you’re all ‘why do people in this house’ to me and then Dawnie gets this whole _speech_?”

“I…” Really, Buffy didn’t know what to say. She shrugged helplessly, trying to make sense of what Willlow wanted from her with her needy eyes.

It had been a long time since the morning, but apparently not long enough. All day Buffy had wondered what would happen when she came home, and this wasn’t anything like the worst scenario – but she still wasn’t sure how to react.

“Xander was flipping out, OK?” Buffy tried to explain, hoping this could all blow over and they could all get back to talking about the books in languages Buffy couldn’t read – all stacked hallway down the table. “I think I reassured him, but then Dawn was there and it seemed easier to…”

“Oh, Xander’s way past flipping out,” Willow informed her, like this conversation was far from over yet. The Rosenberg Codex was well abandoned. “You can’t shut him up. He’s been hitting his hand with the hammer all day – which is kind of funny the first time – but…”

_Just great._

As Willow trailed off, settling into a frown, Buffy waited. It wasn’t completely clear that she knew herself what she was complaining about, and Buffy wasn’t about to prompt her.

It kind of hurt, this whole reaction – from Xander and from Willow. Maybe it made sense, because there was baggage, of course there was, but as far as Buffy was concerned she hadn’t really kept a secret. What was, so far, a fairly chaste weekend fling was not any kind of deal that needed an announcement in the Revello Drive Gazette.

“Why are you asking me this stuff, Will?” Buffy eventually found it within her to say, aiming to make peace. “I mean, you didn’t tell me about you and Kennedy.” There had to have been flingage there, right? Before the semi-public holding of hands and the full PDAs? “It just, you know, came out naturally. I didn’t plan on keeping it a secret this time, I swear, I…”

“But that’s the thing,” Willow replied sadly, her voice still close to a whisper. “ _This time._ Me and Ken don’t have the history you guys do, Buffy. And things are so up in the air, you should’ve –”

Buffy interrupted dully, “I should’ve _what?_ ”

Willow didn’t say anything, not immediately, and Buffy wanted to have an argument about it, get it all out in the open, but she also really did not.

Sighing, she looked around. There was a group of girls loitering in the hallway, chatting about something Buffy couldn’t hear. It was a sixth sense or else plain paranoia, but Buffy was convinced they were talking about her. Maybe her and Spike, maybe just her and her failures.

“Look, we’re only gonna get this thing if we trust each other,” Willow said eventually. “Right?”

Buffy glanced back her way. Honestly, she didn’t know if that was true. “Sure,” she said anyway, forcing a smile.

“We can… We can still talk, you know?” The sympathy in Willow’s eyes was heartbreaking. Buffy didn’t know how to tell her that she didn’t need it, that this wasn’t about her feelings. This was about… Something else.

Even so, that wasn’t the answer Willow wanted to hear, obviously. “Of course we can talk,” Buffy said. “I love it when we talk.”

The girls in the hallway laughed. The sound of it made Buffy’s insides curl up.

“I love it when we talk too,” Willow agreed, smiling.

The thing was, after that, it didn’t seem as though either of them could think of anything to say.

* * *

People started making dinner pretty early in Casa Summers. There was a rota, but mostly it was Andrew and Dawn and whoever wanted to help out that day. For some reason Anya seemed to enjoy it: she was in charge of the food budget anyway, so it made sense for her to be involved with the actual meal preparation.

This was when Buffy checked out. If she ate anything, it was later; usually she made do with the lunch she’d had in town that day. She didn’t like the crowds, really.

Usually Spike was awake, around dinnertime, smoking or hanging out where the hungry mortals wouldn’t bother him. Today, though… Today it turned out, when Buffy went to find him, he was asleep.

Clearly he had come home, at least, no matter how late. He was out for the count in the basement, sleeping like he always had: flat on his back with his limbs spread out at angles. One arm was hanging over the edge of the bed, where Buffy could only assume his magic, vampiric, supernatural circulation was saving him from pins and needles.

He did wear pants these days, which was different – and probably a good thing. Even with them, the sheet had slipped almost to waistband level, scoring a diagonal line across his abs. They could put a soul in him, it seemed, but they still couldn’t quite make him teenage girl appropriate.

It had been a long time since Buffy had been a teenage girl – and even longer since she’d felt like one. Nonetheless, she admired him. He looked peaceful. Quiet – but in a hot way…

There were options here. Several. The obvious one was to go back upstairs and leave Spike to it. The other was to wake him up, with no better excuse than that she wanted him to entertain her. Then there was the third.

Slipping out of her boots, Buffy approached to take a closer look at what she had in front of her. By her judgement, there was a Buffy-shaped gap, just about, between Spike’s chest and the wall, and it looked as inviting as heck.

She’d had a shitty day, dammit. A really shitty day which had mostly been normal, but also pretty shitty. She was tired, like she was always tired.

With every ounce of slayerly co-ordination, then, Buffy sat on the end of the bed, avoiding where she could see Spike’s foot through the sheet. Holding the wall for support, she scooched backwards, turning so that she could slowly, carefully settle into the gap between Spike’s chest and his arm and tuck her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

Spike was a heavy sleeper. It was just how he was. Somehow he managed to wake up if there was a threat, but most of the time when he was out he was out. It was no surprise to Buffy, because of that, when he didn’t seem to notice how she lay her head on his chest, how her arm wedged between them came to rest with her fingers grazing his ribs, when her other arm relaxed across his abdomen.

The last time she’d touched his naked torso for this length of time had been when she’d been rescuing him from the First, so it was a new and different experience, really – but she was fine to have it on her own. She was fine to let her eyes fall shut, just for a little while.

This was different between them, she promised herself. They were different people.

* * *

“…ffy? Buffy, love, wake up. You can’t hide down here all day.”

Later, however much later it was, Buffy woke up to find that she’d moved. Spike was still pretty much in the same position, so she doubted it was him, but she was very much on top of him now, one of her legs between his and one of his legs between hers, her upper body sprawling over his ribs and – other parts. It was definitely a Spike arm that was looped around her back, though, so he wasn’t entirely innocent.

Refusing to open her eyes, in any case, Buffy just groaned. “You’re comfy,” she complained.

Spike sighed. Buffy figured it was mostly a response to her stroking his pecs like he was a pillow. The side she was touching up had a remarkable lack of scars, too, so it was nice to feel. _Mmm, pointy nipple…_

“You’re insufferable…” Spike muttered when she fingered it again. He did move his hand from her back, though, knocking on the crown of her head like she was supposed to let him in. “What’s happened now?” he asked bluntly.

Pouting, Buffy opened her eyes and raised her head to look at him. She was awake again, it seemed, but even as she dug her chin into his sternum, Spike didn’t seem all that sad about it. “What makes you think something’s happened?” she asked, fisting up her groping hand so it couldn’t keep fiddling. _Dangerous,_ she heard herself say in her head.

With his fingers now tangling quite happily into the hair around her shoulders, Spike looked at her down his wrinkled chin. He raised an eyebrow.

“Xander saw us together,” Buffy decided to admit, cutting the charade. She looked up to the wall, so she wouldn’t have to deal with Spike when she said it, just cobwebs. Then she rolled onto her side, back into the crook of Spike’s arm to say the rest of it towards his chest. “He thought I was someone else, like you were not-cheating on me. So like a good friend he told me about it.”

“And…?” Spike asked, his ribs marking out his breaths.

Buffy shrugged, as much as she was able. “We got things straight, in the end,” she said.

“Right,” Spike acknowledged.

It was kind of underwhelming, his reaction to this news. As the silence grew, Buffy found herself a little annoyed about it. “Don’t get, you know, overexcited about it or anything,” she said eventually.

“Sorry, love,” he replied, not sounding it, more sounding tired and grumpy. “Didn’t realise it was a reward.”

Annoyed for real by that particular line, Buffy sat up. Even though his arm had never dropped its hold on her, he was looking away right now, out into the darkness of the basement. “What the hell is your deal?” Buffy asked him. “No, it wasn’t a _reward_.” It was too soon for him to start blowing cold on her, surely? At least, Spike never really had, so…

“Is this what we have now?” Spike asked morosely, turning his head back to look at her. “I wait down here in the dark; you come and find me?” He rolled his eyes. “Only this time with the sanction of Scoobies…”

“You wanna go upstairs?” Buffy asked, not comprehending. She knew Spike got bad dreams sometimes, so maybe this was that. The look on his face was as though she wasn’t really there, or like he expected her to vanish any second. It left Buffy completely unsure what to say.

Spike swallowed, shaking his head. “No,” he told her, “I…” Then he sighed, as if he was scattering away some particularly troublesome thoughts from his head. “What do _you_ want?” he asked seriously.

It was difficult. Buffy wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say, whether she was supposed to keep pressuring him to tell her what was up or whether it was better to do what he wanted and give him something of her thoughts. If that would be better. “Well,” she began, hoping that she could at least get them back to where they’d been the night before. “I was kind of hoping for _my_ reward. I mean, I’ve been so good…”

Even as she said it, as her eyes dropped to Spike’s sexy chest, Buffy didn’t really see it coming. In one burst of action he had her flipped over, so her back slammed into cotton and the wind whistled out of her. The mattress squeaked and the bedframe creaked, but then a hundred and fifty pounds of half-naked vampire was shoving itself roughly down her torso, so most things in the world were OK.

“Hmm…” Spike breathed when their faces were aligned, his eyes somehow still bright in the murk. There was a smirk on his face. Everything in Buffy was made of butterflies. “A reward you say?” he murmured, touching four fingers gently to her cheek.

“Yuh-huh?” Buffy whispered back, daring him as much as she could.

Some babbling brook of relief swelled inside her as Spike lowered his head. He nudged their noses together, murmuring something into her lips that Buffy couldn’t make out. Then he was kissing her, his hand sprawling so the pads of his fingers pulled slightly on the roots of her hair.

It was slow, this kiss, and somehow steamier than the others they’d shared. It felt like the early evening, which they were in, and for some reason Buffy felt like she had all the time in the world, to snake her arms around Spike’s neck and remember exactly how they did this best.

Of course, the way they’d landed wasn’t entirely comfortable – at least not for Buffy, because her shirt was caught all funny and dragging on her neck. Because of that, and because it was fun, there was a certain amount of tustling around. Languid between moments of roughhousing, Buffy got herself settled a little higher in the bed, Spike’s hips between her thighs.

That brought the rest of him as well, obviously. The thing was, Buffy didn’t quite have enough shame not to wrap her legs up behind him and squeeze. Spike was already in her mouth, so it made all the sense in the world to have him butt right up where it could make her gasp again.

When he did so, something hummed along the edge of Buffy’s senses that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It felt pretty good. So good, in fact, she didn’t gasp so much as whimper.

“You feeling rewarded yet?” was what Spike asked as their mouths broke apart.

There was something in his eyes, but Buffy just nodded – tremulously. She squeezed him against her again until he dropped his head back to the kissing.

It was obvious what was happening, after that. Spike shoved into her again – then again – while Buffy’s every finger clung to his scalp and her tongue dove as far back under his as she could reach. The mattress squeaked like the supercouple’s in the dorm back above hers and Willow’s. Buffy had always thought the sound was like some sort of donkey in distress; she and Willow had never talked about it, for reasons of ick, so that was all she had. It definitely fit this particular bed.

Had Spike overheard, Buffy wondered, what she and Xander had talked about? He was in a weird mood, no question, even as he took her hands and squeezed. Overhearing her and Xander was the only explanation she could think of. Either that or something really had happened on his night out, though probably not with another girl.

Buffy hoped it didn’t matter. She hoped it wouldn’t matter to Spike that the sound of the bed wasn’t classy, just like it didn’t matter to her. Back when it had been bad between them, Spike had brought her off like this at least three if not a dozen times, maybe with more rubbing, in various graveyards around town. It was always when there’d been a lull in patrol, a moment of feeling lost, but when there was still the possibility she would have to fight at any second.

It was kind of the way they were living now, with the First. It made this part kind of suitable. OK, it was crazy to go this far – crazier than kissing him had been. All the same, Buffy knew she wanted it; she could feel the desperation crawling up inside her with every moan that left her mouth. More than that, everybody knew about them, it seemed. At least the people who mattered. They were expecting this. They wouldn’t have been shocked if she’d slept with Principal Wood.

The both of _them_ , they were starved for this. It wasn’t long, after all, before they were gulping air practically as much as they were kissing, sweating into each other’s hands and pressing sniggers into each other’s faces. Buffy’s eyelids flittered between open and closed and she was hot all the way through to the middle of her. It was the thing, the problem; she was holding on for dear life and Spike’s cock was hitting into her. Steady, blunt nudges of it was sending shockwavey ripples right through everywhere she had no defences.

Really, she was shivering a lot, eventually, and she was almost grateful for the reprieve when Spike broke from her lips with an, “Mmpfh!”, thudded his forehead slightly too hard into hers and refused to rock back from where he had rocked forward.

Gasping for any sort of oxygen now, Buffy let herself shiver.

Spike’s eyes were big circles she had difficulty making sense of, filling her vision. When he muttered, his voice seemed distant. “Right,” he said. “Any more of that and… I am bloody sick of that washing machine.”

It was all about the journey, really it was. They didn’t have to get anywhere and they didn’t owe each other anything. Nonetheless, Buffy couldn’t help but whisper, “Don’t stop.”

She could feel herself growing cold, steadily – clammy with it. It had to be that Spike felt it too, yet he shook his head against hers, gulping so hard she could feel it through her hands on his jaw. “Buffy…” he breathed her name, sounding desperate.

There was a move in him to pull away – Buffy felt that too. Before he could, however, she returned an old favour and flipped him over onto his back. Her shirt was plastered to her spine; as she sat up she reached down to take it off.

In that instant, though, Spike’s hands smacked onto hers, just shy of her wrists. “Buffy,” he said more seriously. The whole of his face was visible to her now, and looked like he meant his words. “Don’t do this.”

It was almost conciliatory, really, the way he said it, like she could be embarrassed. Almost like she should be embarrassed.

“Don’t do what?” Buffy asked him directly, feeling it as the looseness in her limbs started to stiffen up. “What am I doing that’s so wrong?”

“Nothing,” Spike replied, but of this particular thing he didn’t sound all that convinced.

For a moment, Buffy didn’t say anything – but then she realised there wasn’t anything to say. Nodding once, she swung off of Spike’s hips and back onto the ground, which was hard and cool through her socks.

“I got us an in with your dragon,” was what Spike said as he sat up, watching as she put on her boots as though this was normal and fine.

It was good news, of course – useful news. Right at that moment, though, Buffy wasn’t feeling it. “You know,” she told him when she had her shoes back on, when she realised there was actually something for her to say after all. “Xand gave me a real hard time about us.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. It was stupid, Buffy knew, to use her words as weapons, to make everything she experienced a way of wounding him. Sometimes, though, it felt like it was all she had.

“He said you were dangerous,” she continued. There was no reaction on Spike’s face, just some sort of calculating gaze as he took her all in, like Buffy was the one behaving irrationally. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was wrong.”

Still sat on the side of the bed, a bulge between his hips and both hands clutching at the sheet underneath him, Spike was infuriating. He looked at her with pity, like she was inevitable. It was though all of this had happened before and was going down exactly as he had expected. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings,” he told her bluntly. “You should ask yourself why you’re here.”

“So, the dragon, huh?” Buffy replied, ignoring that line of attack. It was insulting. “You’ll enjoy that, I guess,” she added, looking him up and down. “I mean,” she added, taking the memory and turning anyway, “the part where it’ll burn you to touch me – I’m sure it sounds great.”

For a moment they stared at one another, a wide, aching thread of the unspoken drawn between them.

Then Buffy had had enough. Leaving Spike behind her, she stalked purposefully back across the basement, quite ready to find something else to do with her evening, no matter how lonely she felt. Before she could make it back to the basement stairs, though, Spike was up on his feet. He came up behind her, one hand on her elbow so that he could pivot around in front of her.

“Oi,” he said, his eyes burning. “Don’t talk rot.”

It was enough to make her burst into tears, really it was. How was anyone supposed to handle all of this, to know what was going on with someone who acted this way? “Why don’t you want me?” she asked, because she was weak and tired and sticky.

Spike immediately dismissed her question, “Fuck off.” As he said it he gathered her close, two naked arms around her back so he could cradle her waist and the back of her head, press her face into his throat. Buffy went willingly, shutting eyes against her own weakness. He kissed her hair. “You know it’s not you,” he said like she should have known it. She did – she really did – somewhere deep inside. “I’m still…” Spike continued with a sigh. “You don’t know what it means for me to want you.”

“I wanna understand,” Buffy replied into his chest, because she did, actually. “I want us to be…”

She didn’t finish. Spike didn’t reply, and neither of them said much of anything, didn’t really move, until the basement fell into absolute darkness and they knew it was time to go.

.


	8. breakfasts III

When they’d gone out for their recon trip, Spike had only brought a stake, so the first port of call for his dragon hunt was back at 1630. Specifically, it was the back porch of 1630, because he rather desperately needed a fag and it took longer than the short walk home.

His body didn’t crave nicotine. As far as he had it figured out, the demon had given him a general health boost when he’d been turned and then all his functions had been in stasis ever since. He could put on weight, he could grow his hair however slowly, but what these days they’d call the chemical balances in his brain were all pretty much the same. As a result, every cigarette gave him the same hit it had back in life, when he’d been a social smoker at best – when and if he was ever invited anywhere.

They’d never been on the temperance kick, though, no matter how many non-conformist friends his mother had managed to make, so he’d always had a decent tolerance to alcohol.

Really, it was enough to make anyone worry about the vampire population of the future, how physically unhealthy everyone was these days. People today, they were going into unlife with all sorts of physical cravings, full of fat and distorted brain chemistry, like they said on the TV was causing all sorts of problems.

As Spike finished his smoke, the need for which was entirely psychological, he remembered that, of course, his job these days was to stop people getting dragged into the world of vampirism anyway. Moreover, cravings for caffeine and sugar and whatever else weren’t probably any match for the one getting sired gave you for blood.

The kitchen had been full earlier and he’d been planning to eat when he got back, but now Spike realised he had the perfect opportunity to get himself settled for the night. He went inside, wove his way between various uninterested parties to find a knife and then got himself back into the kitchen. There were a load of groceries sat on the countertop, yet to have been put away, but he ignored them. Rooting through the fridge (which at least had been restocked), he dug out a bag of butcher’s best pig.

Of course, he couldn’t be left in peace to have his meal. For the first twenty seconds or so in the microwave, the kitchen was blessedly empty. Before the rest of it could count down, however, there was Ms. Watcher herself, bustling in with some empty mugs – just like she owned the place.

Spike had his arms crossed. He didn’t uncross them.

“Oh!” Chalmers said when she saw him, then blushing for no reason. “I thought you were out.”

“Change of plan,” Spike replied shortly, looking back to the microwave. Only ten seconds left now. “Slayer’s on patrol; I’ve got something else to look into. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

The microwave dinged. Spike pulled the bag out, squeezing to get the temperature even throughout all the pig.

It really had made unlife easier after Andrew had brought this machine home. No more fucking around with a bain-marie. Maybe there was hope for ill-gotten gains across the world.

With a glance at all the mugs hooked on Lydia’s fingers, which she was now bringing to the sink, Spike figured there wasn’t going to be any clean in the cupboard, as usual. He bit straight through the plastic bag and sucked.

“Is it much different?” Lydia asked curiously, turning on the tap. She was going to run a whole basin of water, it looked like, which would be a relief for his ears, at least, from the way everyone else washed up in this house. “Pig’s blood, I mean. From human.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t serious, was she?

The Watcher looked flustered, shaking the washing up liquid bottle to get the last few drops out. “On a molecular level,” she defended herself, “there’s not very much difference.”

Swallowing, Spike detached himself from the bag. “And on a molecular level there’s not that much nutrition. It’s black magic, yeah?” he reminded her, bitterly. “You take a human life; you take a pig’s life. It’s not really the same.”

Silence returned as Spike went back to his drinking. The sink filled with water and of course they were joined in the kitchen by someone else, this time Dawn. She had more washing up with her, plates and cutlery.

“Hey,” she greeted as she came in. Lydia got the most of it, along with the plates. “Oh, hey Spike,” Dawn added when she saw him, a little more subdued. “I thought you were on patrol.”

Then, before Spike had the chance to explain himself (again), Dawn did a double take.

It was downhill from there. “Why is there lip gloss on your face?” she asked.

Spike stared at her, taking a moment to figure out what she’d said. Then he looked at Lydia, who glanced away as if she’d seen it too.

Lowering the hand that now held a fairly empty bag of blood, Spike swiped his other around his mouth. Sure enough, his fingers came away with a shummering sheen that was faintly golden pink. How the hell had Buffy not noticed it? It must have been too dark…

“Oh my god!” Dawn exclaimed, putting two and two together and coming up with a nice, round four. “That’s Buffy’s Maybelline Sugared Honey! Why is it on your face? What have you…?”

“Now, Dawn,” Spike began, cursing the fact he’d come back here. _Let’s not overreact._

“This is…” she cut into anything he would have had a chance to say. Fear, shock and worry were written all over her face. “This is disgusting,” she said, finally. “How can the two of you do this?”

All right, so that hurt. Spike turned away so the girl wouldn’t see it, tipping the last bit of blood out of his bag and into his mouth before he binned it.

That was disgusting as well, he knew, but finances were so tight in this place it didn’t feel right to waste good food.

“I don’t understand,” Dawn continued, sounding like she was seconds away from tearful. “After everything you guys… Is it all even true, what Buffy…?”

“Dawn.” It was Chalmers who said it. Spike glanced at her, up from the bin. There was a serious look on her face and Spike was grateful. This seemed almost like payback from the night before, like she was doing him a favour. “When we spoke earlier, you said you didn’t always listen to yourself.”

“I’m not apologising,” Dawn immediately replied. Spike snuck a glance at her profile, the fury contained within it. “Not to _him_.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Spike intervened, drawing her anger back because he wasn’t a coward. He refused to be. “You’re not wrong,” he allowed her, because, hell, she wasn’t. “Not for all of it. Just...” He dared to ask her – he dared because he had to, “You won’t talk like this to Buffy, will you? She doesn’t deserve it.”

Dawn’s eyes flashed. Like the scary, scary adult she was practically doomed to become, she laughed. “Oh,” she said, “where do you get _off_ telling me to do anything?”

Staring into the face of her, Spike was lost for words. This bridge, it felt like, was entirely burned, all the ashes long washed downstream. In some ways it didn’t seem like a catastrophe of the year before, but a catastrophe of this one. It ached inside of him.

“Spike,” Lydia called his name again. She was looking at him sympathetically, weirdly as though she wanted to be his friend, not just understand him for her books. “Maybe you should go.”

He nodded, once, because it seemed like a good idea. With a final glance at Dawn, who still had a thousand emotions on her face, Spike turned and left the way he’d come.

* * *

It was a cigarette he’d needed earlier, but now Spike needed a drink. Again, no physical craving, just a psychological need to cleanse his every sinew of the feeling he could feel.

In the past, of course, such exercises had not gone well, which had resulted in many things the not so very least of which was the return of his soul. Tonight, Spike had no such interest in finding out what consequences would beset his drinking, but he did at least have a good excuse to swing by the one demon bar that would still have him, on the other side of town.

It was a long walk – about an hour – so the swinging was more figurative than anything. Last year Spike would have taken the bike to anywhere this far away, but that had got lost somewhere between leaving town and finding his way back. He was good. He didn’t drop in at any of the liquor stores en route and waited until drinking would only be a necessary part of blending in.

Of course, that gave him a lot of time to think. It wasn’t something he was good at, so he didn’t get very far, mostly just replayed Dawn’s words round and round as he tried to make sense of whether and how much she meant them.

 _Disgusting._ That was the kicker. Yet it was true, wasn’t it? It was an epithet he’d once longed for, but it cut him to the bone this time around.

This whole business with Buffy was a dream come true, for the most part. The problem was that it also, in a very real way, wasn’t. In his dream scenario, he did not get together with the woman of his dreams after once attacking her for sex in her own family bathroom. Nor did he live in her basement like a parasite, unable to leave in case the source of all evil in the world got its mitts on him again. He didn’t have a terrible relationship with her only remaining close family – and he wasn’t so pathetic that a few cross words could send him scuttling for liquid reassurance.

By the time he reached the bar, Spike didn’t even want a drink. He wanted to prove he could do this without one.

Of course, when the barman asked, “Hey. What you having?”

It seemed churlish to refuse. With a sigh, Spike gave in. “Jack,” he said. “And a bottle of Sam.”

It was crowded in here tonight, but the bloke nodded anyway. He looked human, but he was a mixed breed of some such – had demonic hearing along with whatever else no one could see. “You want the regular lager or one of these seasonals we got in? You might like this one for summer – it’s kind of like a Cologne beer.”

 _Ja, zwei Weizenbier und noch ein Kölsch._ When the hell Spike had said that, he didn’t know, but he remembered it. “Bloody craft beers,” was what he said now – and the bartender smirked in agreement. That bit of banter out of the way, he conceded to the fact he’d always liked a German brew. “Yeah, I’ll give it a go,” he said. “By the way,” he added casually, as the keep turned to get his shot, “is Maldred in tonight?”

“Sure,” the bloke replied, hearing nothing amiss. He wasn’t the snitch that Willy was, this guy – Spike didn’t even know his name – but he didn’t like trouble. Cole’s was an altogether classier establishment than The Alibi Room, underneath the necessary grime. “He’s out back.”

“Cheers,” Spike replied as he took his shot – necked it. With that back on the bar he reached for the wallet inside his coat, ready to pay.

The barman, however, didn’t release his hold on Spike’s beer. “You know I can’t let you go back there,” he said seriously.

That was the thing, of course. Like everywhere else, this place was head over heels in hock to Teeth and his cronies. It made the poker a hell of a lot better than at Willy's, but it also meant that Spike had been _persona non grata_ for at least a year now. Even after he’d paid back the Siamese, the fact that the Slayer had killed off the shark's entire posse of henchmen had apparently left Teeth with no choice but to bar Spike from all lines of credit and all means of play.

It was bad enough that the Hellmouth picked up Los Angeles’ filth, but Teeth really proved that the stuff from Vegas was worse.

“Fine,” Spike replied, pulling the bills from his wallet without a fuss. It would be on him to find a chair now. “I’ll wait.”

Again the barman nodded. Really, Spike thought, with the speed the world tended to shift around his feet, it was always a surprise when none of the people moved with it.

* * *

A while later, Spike had had several more beers and two conversations. The first was with a young Brachen couple from down south, who were nice enough if square as a set of houses – they’d left early. The second was a sweet vampire bird named Consuelo, who was on the game but whose trade had dried up down at the new bitehouse. She zeroed in on Spike as ‘that vamp who’s with the Slayer’, telling him he could distract attention without needing to do anything special; he said fine, because he’d been getting bored again. They made small talk, and he told her about the First Evil – how it was making people leave town. She said she might try and look up a distant cousin of hers in LA.

It was all very congenial, but as the clock moved forward Spike found himself getting very impatient indeed. Buffy’s patrol with the girls would have been long finished by now, and he still had an hour’s walk back home. Maldred, the slimy git, was nowhere to be seen.

Around the time that Spike was seriously thinking of packing things in for the night, after a couple of earlier false starts, the daft, shrivelled wizard appeared from around the end of the bar. “Spike!” he exclaimed, like the imp no one was ever certain he was. “Tobias said you were looking for me.”

“Yeah,” Spike replied, clonking his latest beer down on the table in front of him. “And you’ve taken your sweet time about it.”

Consuelo, the dear girl, recognised her cue to leave and left. Spike waved her off.

The old imp Maldred tutted, straightening his grime-green velvet hat around his ears. It had a point to it, just about. “Don’t be like that,” he said as he sat down opposite. “Now, have you brought me good news? Is Anyanka’s shop opening doors again?”

“I ain’t brought you any news,” Spike replied, remembering how frustrating it was to deal with this berk. He hadn’t had much to do with him since the summer Buffy was dead, and there’d been an incident with sporing death-pansies. “I’ve come to ask you about dragons.”

“Oh, really?” Maldred asked, waving his hand by his shoulder. Behind him, two beermats did a tap dance on the bar. “Dragons, you say?”

The barman was muttering, _“Yeah, yeah.”_ Seconds later, a sherry glass of what smelled to Spike like mead was served to the beermats and spirited through the air to their table.

“And what is it you want Maldred to tell you about dragons?” the wizard continued as it arrived.

Spike paused for a moment, nursing his irritation. Maldred used the time to take a sip of his drink, smacking his lips together and sighing with relish.

“Holy dragon,” Spike eventually stated, deciding it was best to make his request as direct as possible. “In the Bronze.” Maldred raised his eyebrows, as though he had never heard this story before. _Yeah right._ “I’ve never seen her,” Spike persisted, “but she has a valet somewhere round town, don’t she?”

With an exaggerated frown, Maldred shook his head. “No one calls their humans valets anymore, Spike,” he said with what had to be mock-exasperation. “They’re called _guardians_ now. We live in a post- _Lord of the Rings_ era.”

“What, and that makes you Gollum?” Spike couldn’t resist. He’d read the books, obviously. Needed a strong edit, as far as he was concerned, and more Éowyn. Less of bloody boring Frodo.

In any case, Maldred didn’t seem particularly keen on this gag. “Well,” he scoffed, putting his drink down as if he was about to stand up, “if you came here to be juvenile…”

“Oh, shut up, you old coot,” Spike shot back at him, before taking a slug of his beer. He did like beer. The right amount of it, not too much – it made things easier. “D’you know the dragon or don’t you?”

For a moment, it looked like the imp was going to be difficult. He narrowed his wrinkled, beady eyes and stared down deep into Spike’s soul. It was a little unnerving, but then seconds later Maldred was sitting back, his drink in his hand again. “Ah, Beatrice,” he said, like he’d only just remembered. “What good times we had, back in Constantinople… Yes, she’s around,” he conceded. “I can’t imagine she’ll grant an audience to any vampire, though. Even of your persuasion.”

“Well, I’m not asking for me, am I?” Spike immediately replied, ignoring the dig about his soul. “As you well know,” he reminded Maldred, because he clearly did.

The wizard raised his eyebrows innocently.

Spike rolled his eyes. “I’m asking for the Slayer,” he said. “Think even the most holy _sanctissima_ might give _her_ the time of day.”

“Hmm,” Maldred replied, looking around. “You may well be right…” he continued, non-committal as he reached over to a neighbouring table and the napkin which lay by an abandoned glass. “I’ll write you an introduction to her squire,” he finally said, pulling a pen out of mid-air and clicking the end of it.

Spike ignored the fact that his language had slipped to be even more old-fashioned than his. _Squire._ It was pathetic. “Cheers,” he said anyway, meeting Maldred’s eyes again before the wizard began to write, then knocking back the rest of his drink. This wasn’t necessarily going to be fun.

“Here,” the old imp finally said, passing the napkin over. Spike took it, folded it up and put it in his coat. “Go to the Bronze. Ask for Dante.”

 _Dante and Beatrice?_ You couldn’t make this up.

“Oh – and Tobias has my tab.”

* * *

Feeling significantly lighter in pocket, Spike made the long walk back to the Bronze. It was pushing 3am now, from what the clock on Main Street reckoned, and if he wasn’t lucky he thought he was going to find the club already shut.

By the time he got there, things were definitely winding down. There was no one waiting in the queue outside and the usual bouncer was nowhere in sight.

Still, the lights were on and the music was pumping, so Spike made his way over to the entrance. Before he’d reached the threshold, however, the missing bouncer came into view, all arm muscles and an annoying number of inches above Spike’s head. “Hey,” he said, crossing the arms over his grey t-shirt. “We got no new entries now. Place is closing for the night.”

Around the corner then, behind Spike, two women came giggling up to the entrance. They were pretty much falling over each other, shrieking as they did so, and they had more hair than clothes. The bouncer didn’t even blink as he unclicked the guide rope beside him and let them through.

Spike cocked an eyebrow.

“They were here already,” the bouncer replied, like it didn’t even matter if it was true. “Must’ve gone lost themselves from out the fire escape.”

“Look,” Spike said, trying to be reasonable. He knew bouncers and he knew the last thing he needed was to wind this bloke up. “I’m not here for a drink.”

“You know,” the bouncer said, ignoring him. “I saw your honey around here earlier.”

His _honey?_ Spike was taken aback.

“Small thing,” the man continued, “Blonde hair; green eyes. She’s been by here before.”

“What are you on about?” Spike asked, wondering what the hell he’d done to deserve this particular evening, the moon long gone behind clouds and this tosser stuck in front of him. Because, Christ; did everyone know about them now? “Are you talking about _Buffy_?”

Of course, in his time Spike had done many things to deserve this.

“I didn’t see either of you for a while,” the bouncer cut over him, proving it. “Figured maybe you two had patched things up.” He had a superior look in his eyes, this bouncer, like he had a claim on morals that Spike could never come by. It seemed rude. “But then she’s coming here again and I’m thinking you must have gone missing. And now I see _you_ …”

“Mate, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,” Spike tried to interrupt. This was a serious problem, after all. If there was one truth in life, it was that you were going to get nowhere while the bouncer thought you were scum. All right, there was nothing to stop Spike from forcing his way in, arm muscles or no arm muscles, not now the chip was out, but he’d get nowhere with finding his contact without this bloke onside. “I’m not cheating on Buffy,” he promised, because it was ridiculous, the whole idea of it. “I don’t know why she was here but she wasn’t looking for me.”

Actually, why had she been here? Spike was willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say that he had seen her, but it seemed a bit off the beaten track for a patrol recon mission. Presumably she’d been tracking a lead or something. At least Spike hoped so. Buffy wasn’t the sort of girl to go clubbing on her own.

God only knew when she’d come by here before, looking for him. She could have made less of an impression, as far as Spike was concerned.

Of course, out here in the nighttime, with himself a half-sheet to the wind, Spike wasn’t surprised that Buffy had drawn another champion to her cause. It was what she did. It was what she’d done. The facing of the Bronze looking grimy now they were coming close to dawn, and he could only imagine her coming by and brightening the whole place up.

For the most part, Spike reckoned he’d convinced her he was worthy. Presumably he must have done, for her to let herself be close to him, again if not at all. The problem was convincing everybody else, who either saw him with more clouded eyes or else brighter and clearer than Buffy was able to do.

The problem for Spike was that he just didn’t know. He didn’t know if Buffy was the one to see the way of things in him or if it was everyone else, if it was himself. Every part of him yearned to be the way she saw when she looked at him, but it was difficult not to feel like he wasn’t using her – like he wasn’t wasting her.

That particular image, after all, was vivid and clear in this bouncer’s eyes. “You can talk whatever game you want,” he said. “But if you think I’m letting you in to use my club as your pick-up house, you got a lot of other things coming.”

Growling in his frustration, Spike pushed as much of his self-doubt aside as he could. “I’m being honest with you,” he said, knowing he didn’t sound it one jot. “I’m not here for any of your punters; I’m looking for some bloke called Dante.”

The guy pulled back, his hands falling to his hips as surprise crossed his face. “Yeah?” he replied, completely giving away that there was at least someone called Dante who was known there. “And what do you want with him?”

“I’ve got a message for him, innit,” Spike replied, feeling like he was having his teeth pulled. When this particular line got no response, he even pulled the napkin out from inside his coat and held it in front of his face. “It might not look like much, but it’s important.”

Really, Spike wondered how many conversations this bouncer had were with drunk people. He seemed a little slow to pick up on a straightforward point of fact, looking between Spike’s face and the napkin as though he didn’t believe there was any connection.

“O-K,” he allowed eventually, his words stilted. His expression remained suspicious, but Spike could hardly blame him for that. “How about you give it to me and I’ll pass it along?”

He made to take the note, but Spike pulled it back into the safe-keeping of his pocket. “You’ve got to be joking,” he replied, staring the man down. “I wouldn’t trust you with one of those messages you get army jets to write in the sky. I mean,” he pointed out, “would _you_ if you were me?”

The man smiled, just a little, hopefully because he saw Spike’s point. However, what he said was, “Well, you’re gonna be waiting a long time.”

Something in the way he said it clued Spike in to a rather unfortunate possibility. He looked the man in the eye, took stock of the humour in his expression and the part of the way he stood that looked an awful lot like victory. “Oh,” he complained, “you’ve got to be bloody kidding me.” As usual in the world of Spike, anything that could go tits up made sure to shove its feet over its head and have a day at the sodding races. “ _You’re_ Dante?” he challenged.

“What?” the guy replied, like this was turning out to be one of the better outcomes for this particular encounter. “You were expecting a white man with that name?”

The bouncer snickered. Spike rolled his eyes and pulled the napkin out again. “Here,” he said, not touching that line with a barge pole, though it was fair to say he’d initially gone down an Alighieri route. “It’s from Maldred, out in the ‘burbs.”

Dante, as it seemed Spike would have to call him, turned out to be a careful reader. He took the napkin and unfolded it, holding it up to the dim light of the foyer behind him. His eyes narrowed as he traced over the small, careful lines of script, glancing to Spike and then back to the paper.

As he reached the end, or at least as he seemed to, he lowered the napkin back down and looked at Spike with shrewd eyes. “So what you’re telling me is that you’re a vampire – with a soul.”

Spike shrugged, wishing that didn’t actually vouch for him, because it didn’t when it came down to the facts.

“And that cutie pie’s the Vampire Slayer?” This part seemed to surprise the man more.

Thankfully, Spike found it easier to get his back up on this point. After all, _he’d_ never underestimated the girl. “What?” he challenged the man who was apparently a defender of light, or at least the errand boy for one of the greater forces of good on this earth. He mocked the bloke’s tone from a second ago, “You thought you fancied the girl for that weird nose she’s got?”

The man took the point, nodding his head as he seemed to assess himself the way Spike had done a thousand times before. “And she’s – making time with you. No matter how many chicks you score.”

Any moment now, Spike reckoned, he was going to get really pissed off. He put his hands on his own hips and talked the accusation down. “It wasn’t like that, all right? It was a whole business. The First Evil…”

“Oh yeah, I heard about that,” Dante interrupted, like they were having a chat in the employee’s lounge – like he didn’t get enough opportunities to have chats like this. “It sounded like something, but B’s not so worried. She says keep the club open, so we’re all gonna keep the club open.”

Again, Spike rolled his eyes. “Sounds great.” It was a funny point, actually, about how the Bronze never shut during any apocalypse. He’d never connected it to the rumours about the dragon living there, but maybe it all added up. “Look,” he tried to get the conversation back on track, not entirely surprised that Maldred’s introduction hadn’t perfectly helped matters. “The Slayer’s got it in her head that Beatrice,” he tried out, still not certain of the name – he’d never been one for saying it the Italian way – “she can help with this particular apocalypse. I’m trying to get an audience, right?” he added. “For her, not for me.”

“I got it,” Dante replied, shoving the napkin into his pocket. He looked at Spike with new eyes. They were still mistrustful, of course, but they were new. Oddly, they seemed to look at Spike more like this guy knew him: there was respect there, grudging though it was. The disappointment, though – the irritation – that seemed to run deeper, enough that it rankled. “She’ll say yes,” he added assuredly, surprising Spike. “She’s been wanting to meet the Slayer for years.”

“Good,” Spike replied. It was strange, almost, that things could be this easy, but he was happy to run with it for the moment. Buffy would be pleased. “We’ll be back tomorrow night.”

“I’m tell you for free, though,” Dante added, before Spike could turn to leave. There was a warning now, on his face. A friendly one, which was a little bizarre, but a warning all the same. “She ain’t gonna like _you_.”

“Yeah, well,” Spike replied, feeling the end of this very long night. “Sing me a sodding new one.”

* * *

By the time Spike made it back to 1630, it wasn’t all that far from dawn. He let himself in through the back, feeling odd that he could let himself in so silently the way that any predator could – into the henhouse and set to do mischief without anyone the wiser before he wanted them to be.

For a few minutes, he stood in the kitchen, trying to feel like he belonged there – as though he wasn’t some strange appendage to this household. The sort of thing that let itself in right before the red morning to bury itself away in the dark. It was difficult, if he was completely honest. It was very difficult indeed.

The groceries from earlier, they’d been put away now. Spike couldn’t imagine that Buffy had done it, but if there was one benefit to bearing so many bodies in the house, it was that the shared labour was light when and if people chose to pitch in. What he hoped was that she’d come home from patrol and seen the place like this – in the light if not in the dark gloom that Spike was stood in now – and what he hoped was that she’d taken it to mean that people cared.

It wasn’t always in her nature, Spike knew, to recognise how special people thought she was. This kitchen, from how Spike could see it, it was spotless, and that didn’t mean nothing. He traced a finger along the sink, which had been horrific a few days ago. It was looking all right now.

There was one lonely glass in the basin of it, because of course there always would be. It wasn’t always easy to sleep in a house like this and someone had clearly wanted a glass of water.

What was odd, of course, when Spike looked closer, was that the glass was still wet. Beads of liquid rested halfway up its insides, as though it had only just been drunk and abandoned, washed out if it wasn’t water before.

That didn’t happen quite so much in this house. It was gone four AM, so whoever’d woken up had woken up pretty late.

Unless… There was another possibility of course. Buffy’s patrol should have finished hours ago, the reconnaissance and the part where the girls had a stab at it. If she’d actually waited up for him then Spike was going to shoot himself in his own face, because the thought of it hurt too badly. She wasn’t supposed to waste her sleeping time on him. Not Buffy.

The worrying thing was, of course, that it was possible. She was getting withdrawn again, his girl, and Spike was worried what it would look like this time around. What exactly the Slayer could do with an apocalypse this big, Spike didn’t know if he wanted to see, especially not if there was a dragon involved.

Yet he didn’t know and he couldn’t be certain that it would not turn out all right in the end. Maybe she could – if anyone could…

In the end, really, there was nothing Spike could do but wash out the glass again and set it on the draining board. It had been a long night. He went to bed.

.


	9. breakfasts IV

_How dare you, Slayer? You come here with this – creature, wreathed in darkness. And you expect these things from me?_

“Well, I didn’t know you could read minds, did I?”

“Bloody hell, Buffy; I can feel it. It’s found it. Run – get out of here - _go_.”

_Come back when you are ready to suffer._

That was the last thing the dragon said before it abandoned them. One Vampire Slayer – check – one vampire – check – in an overly large storeroom opposite the bathrooms in the Bronze. The Vampire Slayer was her, of course: Buffy. The vampire was Spike, who had a trigger in his head that had been set there by the First Evil and was an affront, apparently, to any self-respecting mind-reading scion of goodness in the world.

It was all too fast, really. They’d left the house in stronger spirits, and Buffy had managed to put the embarrassment to one side. It wasn’t every day that she got turned down for sex, nor else that she begged someone for it, but the overly long snuggle-hug had been sweet – the sort of thing she hadn’t experienced in years – and she’d been glad to play the dream team with Spike, because they were good at it.

Now in the turn of an instant she was looking at this guy who didn’t know her, all demon face and scowling as he stalked, and circled, and – leapt.

The fight was brutal from the moment it began. Buffy fell to the floor hard, one shoulder blade jarring pain down the side of her body. Rough and ready, she pulled her heavy kicky boots into her chest and planted them right on the wrong side of Spike’s centre of balance, flipping him up and over her head like a piece of construction waste.

Space was tight, that was the thing, the sides of the room piled high with boxes and crates of beer that had never seen the blue light of the club’s dancefloor. It was a dragon’s hoard, pathologically so. When Spike smashed into it the glass and plastic clanged like the Almighty.

He was up, of course, by the time Buffy was back on her feet. Her gaze was full of him growling as she rushed over, an arm against his throat to slam him back again into the crates. “You don’t want to do this,” she commanded, right in his face. “You’re stronger than this!”

Completely unbothered by the way she was crushing his gullet, Spike snarled. His eyes were yellow and he pulled her closer. One dirty hand groped her backside for a squeeze and it startled her in a way that really shouldn’t have happened.

Even as the cold fear rushed through her, she felt weak. As she jumped back, too, Buffy knew it was a mistake. Spike took the inch and crowded her round into the corner of the room, his hands like weapons as they seized her upper arms.

Stumbling backwards, Buffy reached out, pulling down crate after crate, as each one failed to anchor her. Bottletops scraped along her palms and fingers as the room filled with the sticky smell of hops.

Just as her eyes tore themselves to the ceiling, Buffy saw the demon’s face loom in – no banter in his expression, no nothing. She cried out as the fangs sank into her neck, because she couldn’t not. She couldn’t believe it, that this was happening to her after all this time. Of all ways, that _this_ would be how she went out. There was nothing she could do but fight, twist in Spike’s grip to try and get free.

The pain was quick, deep, but it didn’t send her into shock: there was little that could. She brought up her knee, but his legs were too close to hers where he’d crushed her against the wall.

A sob escaped her as Spike’s first slug rippled out of her veins. Her hand was bleeding on its own, cold and wet around two hot scrapes. Her back hurt where she’d hit the wall and where she’d fallen earlier. So it was gonna be.

_I’m sorry._

Yet – the second pull, the one she expected to immediately follow, it never came. Spike seemed to have trouble swallowing; he was so close to her ear that Buffy could hear her own blood slosh as he had to gulp it down.

The cold air of the Bronze hit her wound as his fangs retreated – as… _What? His nose?_ It rubbed against her, soft but not all that soothing.

Then, in a moment, Spike was rearing back so a demon’s face stared into hers. Its eyes were intimate and bright and confused – terrified. The dragon was gone and Dante had retreated long ago, but Buffy was there and this demon was watching her, snarling, those yellow eyes burning into her heart.

With a jerk of violent action he pressed his forehead against hers, wrinkles and ridges like gravel against Buffy’s skin, while one hand let go of its bruising grip on her arm. Air rushed into his nose, sweeping past her own as the thing inhaled. The breath came with some sort of eskimo-nuzzle that was far more erotic than it should have been.

Not at all gently, Spike the vampire caressed her face, and Buffy covered his hand with hers. She couldn’t figure it out.

Despite the lurch in her stomach, though, there didn’t seem to be anything to figure out, not in the end. Turning into him, Buffy kissed Spike’s palm, squeezed her eyes shut and loved him.

_Thwack._

He slumped against her with a thud, out cold. Buffy looked to the other arm she’d wrenched free… A beer bottle was juddering in her hand, blood on its neck just like hers. She didn’t remember taking hold of it.

* * *

It took a while for Xander to arrive.

Buffy hadn’t told him much on the phone, only that Spike’s trigger had gone off, they were behind the Bronze, and she needed him to bring the car. Really, Buffy wasn’t sure what she was going to say. It was irrational, and they hadn’t really done anything, but this still somehow felt like a punishment for starting up again with Spike. Xander was going to kill her, she knew it.

“Buffy?” he called out to her, even as he pulled up to the mouth of the alleyway. The driver door was open before he’d come to a stop. It was barely in park before he was spilling out of the door. He’d driven without a seatbelt, which in Buffy’s opinion was just plain reckless. “Buffy!”

She was starting to feel pretty woozy now, with the bloodloss. Her speech had been a little slurred on the phone and she had no idea what she would sound like at this second in time. So little of her blood had gone down Spike’s throat, but her neck didn’t seem to care, resolutely dampening the ancient _Dingoes Ate My Baby_ t-shirts she’d found in the storeroom. She was on number four now, from a box of them.

“My god, what happened?” Xander was asking. Behind him, Anya was trotting around the car with a first aid kit as big as her torso. Buffy was strangely glad to see them together. “Your neck!” Xander was still panicking. “Did he bite you?”

Buffy was sitting on the ground, as she bled. Her legs were stretched out in front of her and Spike’s head was resting in her lap, the bruise on his temple plain for all to see. Looming above her, Xander looked big and tall and intimidating. She could only look away, feeling the guilt.

“Hey Buffy,” Anya was saying then, kneeling down by Buffy’s Spike-free side and opening up her kit. “I’ve got mercurochrome and – that glue stuff and, and those thick kind of dressings that regular humans have to wear. You, uh, wanna take that rag away?”

Steeling herself, Buffy fought against her own survival instinct. It was telling her not to let go, to keep the pressure against her neck even if she couldn’t hold up on her own feet. This was her fault, she knew that was what they were going to say. This was her fault.

But how could she help it?

Eventually, Buffy squeezed her eyes shut, filled her lungs and relaxed her grip. Pain seized her and her head throbbed from its lack of oxygen. “There you are…” Anya was saying, soothingly, but Buffy was shivering. The other woman nudged her arm down, but as the t-shirt came away it made the warm, living mass of blood in Buffy's hand feel cold and dead and lost. “OK – I’m just gonna clean you up…”

Buffy hissed as the antiseptic stung into her. Heavy, stinging tears shot into her eyes like darts. They would figure it out, she knew, why she’d let herself get to this point. And the thing was, there was no defence. It was comforting, even here, with her eyes shut and with her hurting from what he’d done, to have a killer’s head resting in her lap. His ear was against her crotch seam and her hand was on his chest, and, ultimately? She wanted him awake.

“God,” Anya was saying, now pushing fingers against her, one hand on one side of her head and the other at her neck. “The wound’s small, but the way it’s bleeding…” She was talking to Xander, the word’s directed some other way than Buffy’s ears. “I think he must’ve hit an artery. Maybe grazed it? She’s not super squirty, but that could be the blood pressure… If they’d come I’d say we call an ambulance.”

There were no ambulances, of course. It had been on the news. The hospital was still running, but they’d had to take the EMTs off the streets so they could fully staff the wards and the ER. The whole thing was just another reason so many people had left town already.

“Oh, this is not good,” Xander was saying, sounding like he didn’t know what to do. “This is not good at all. You think we should take her in?”

“I don’t know,” Anya replied, just as anxiously. “She might need a tetanus shot. Do we know what Spike had for lunch today?”

“I’m fine…” Buffy managed to say, at least in response to that. The words came out like a groan, but she figured her meaning was clear. “Just take me home; it could’ve been worse.”

“ _Worse?_ ” Xander shouted. With her eyes shut, Buffy couldn’t see him, but his words were like a blow. “How exactly could it have been _worse?_ ”

Pushing harder on her wound, Anya snapped, “Stop making her squirt, Xander! We need to get this thing closed.”

“He could’ve killed me,” was what Buffy said, forcing herself to relax. It was difficult, but as seconds passed she managed it, easing her eyes open to look down at Spike’s unconscious face. It was still in its angry demon form, a trace of her own blood crusting around his mouth. She wiped it away with her thumb. “He could’ve killed me,” she repeated, allowing for panic to subside and healing to begin, raising her gaze to look at her friend.

He was closer than she’d thought he’d be. That was a surprise. The pain had done something to Buffy’s perception, because Xander was kneeling by Anya’s side in the gravel – a bunch of used cotton wool in one hand and a roll of surgical tape in the other. He looked scared, his eyes round and his hair curling over his forehead. “But…” he began, actually talking a lot more quietly than Buffy had thought he’d been. “You fought him off. Didn’t you?”

Buffy smiled, the tears that had been caught in her eyes now free to dribble down her nose. “I hit him with everything I had,” she promised them all, “because I needed to get him down.” She still couldn’t speak entirely clearly, and felt like she needed at least a quart of orange juice and a cookie. Probably her legs weren’t gonna work. Her mind, however – that was clearing. “But that was only after…” OK, so maybe they didn’t need all the details. “He got me, right?” Buffy continued to explain, going slowly as a wave of dizziness hit. “Nowhere to go – no way to move – he… He was a demon, but he… He took one swallow and he stopped.”

There was a moment as Xander took that in. Anya didn’t seem to be paying attention, but instead exclaimed, “There!” as she stopped fiddling around and simply kept a constant pressure on Buffy’s neck.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” Xander eventually replied, glancing down to Spike’s unconscious form. Buffy felt something like a protective urge run down her arm. “Are you asking me to be impressed? He could’ve killed you just as easy with that one bite.”

“But he didn’t,” Buffy insisted, as strongly as she was able, feeling like she could cry. His want for her – the want he’d been so afraid of – it hadn’t killed her. It wasn’t in him to destroy her, and she’d known it, she really thought she’d known it – but now the truth was here for everyone to see.

Slowly, steadily, Buffy’s vision was almost clearing. She figured she was going to be OK. The night around them was bright; the bricks grimy and the ground uneven, littered with trash. Even Slayer healing didn’t work this quickly, but it never failed her, and sometimes that promise was enough.

“He didn’t kill me,” she repeated, clinging to the thought as she shut her eyes again. Just for a moment she let the thought gather within her, translating what it meant for everybody else. “The First is gonna be so… Pissed.”

“What was that about the First?” Anya was the one to ask, her face not quite in Buffy’s field of vision as she dumped things back in the first aid kit, her hard fingers always against the fuzzy-feeling dressing on Buffy’s neck. “You don’t think… You think this is about what it said to Andrew? That this was Spike’s time and he – and he blew it?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy replied, meeting Xander’s eyes. He still looked scared, but at least he looked serious. That was all Buffy wanted in this fight, from any of them. Hell, even herself. “But…” Ooh, she was tired though. “But it could’ve been. And – it’ll be its last chance. I’m… That thing is going.”

Slowly, a smile spread across Xander’s face. Buffy felt a small grin cross her own, and it almost felt like she’d won something. As she watched, her friend’s gaze drifted to Anya, and Buffy wondered how she was looking, too disciplined in the art of wound-treatment to look around.

That date night she and Xander had both had, it had been a disaster. Now, though, Buffy wondered if Xander’s hadn’t been as pointless as her own, even before the girl had strung him up.

“I wasn’t interrupting, was I?” she asked after a moment, mostly to break the silence but also to keep herself alert. They all knew she shouldn’t really move to the car until her wound had stabilised, not when there was no better medical help waiting for her. All the same, it was kinda cold. “You know,” Buffy continued, knowing her voice was frail, drifting into a whisper, “when I rang before?”

“Oh no…” Xander replied, shaking his head as if he’d been caught out.

Anya, however, had no such discretion. She told Buffy bluntly, “We were about to have ill-advised sex in Spike’s bed.” Then, because apparently Buffy needed a further explanation, she added, “We didn’t.”

Again with the discipline, at least with the pain, Buffy held back her laughter. Xander’s face was a picture; Buffy wondered if they’d picked the basement because they’d thought there would still be chains. “Well,” she said, before she gave much thought to it. “I guess that’s going…” _I guess that’s going around._

Buffy was still not speaking entirely clearly, so the moment she’d said it she immediately hoped Xander hadn’t heard. Or at least didn’t figure out what she meant. She tried to keep her expression bland, as if she’d said something innocuous, or else anything but what she’d actually meant to say.

As it was, Xander looked at her a little weirdly, but not as if the implications had fully made themselves known to him. It wasn’t like she was ashamed of herself, Buffy thought, but this wasn’t the time for jokes. She had a neck wound to deal with. And a trigger.

Besides, it _hadn’t_ been ill-advised. Here was proof.

“God,” Buffy murmured, nonetheless sick with pain. “Am I fixed yet…?”

* * *

They snuck into the house through the back door. Xander and Anya manhandled Spike downstairs while Buffy sat in the kitchen, heavy and slumped in her chair. She felt like her head weighed a hundred pounds, but she knew she couldn’t go to bed – couldn’t really be left on her own in case the wound re-opened when she was unconscious. So she was sitting, with a bowl of pasta left over from dinner and the tallest glass of watered-down orange juice Xander could make, complete with a curly straw.

She figured she’d be OK. She wasn’t unconscious, and with her that meant she could only get better. At least – so Buffy figured.

At the same time, she was plotting, because it wasn’t just about getting better. They would have to go with Althanea’s plan and get the trigger out of Spike by any means possible. It was too dangerous to leave it in there, really, no matter how much she was cheerleading danger in this particular fight. Maybe Spike didn’t want Buffy in his head, but he’d already done her enough harm, hadn’t he? And –

Buffy was running on endorphins. It seemed reasonable that her wits weren’t at her best to notice when someone she wasn’t expecting entered the kitchen. Of course, when that person was her sister it seemed kind of silly that she hadn’t expected it.

“Hey Buffy,” Dawn said when she first saw her, flippantly like it was any other day. “What’re you…”

She paused with a sick inevitability. Buffy looked up, her lips and her fingers still on her straw, the bandage on her hand making her hold thick and fuzzy like a teddy bear’s. Far away, just inside the entrance to the kitchen, Dawn looked at her with rage that was growing steadily.

“I’m gonna kill him,” she said, with a certainly that sounded like she’d killed many more than, what, no more than five vampires in her life. “I’m gonna burn him, and –“

Then, of course, there were tears in her eyes. Buffy held out her arm and her baby sister ran straight into it, hunching close into her shoulder. She was a little too tall to do it properly, but the feeling was there in the way her fists bunched at the collar of Buffy’s shirt and her tears fell in Buffy’s hair.

“I hate this,” Dawn said, her voice wet and unstable. “I hate him, how he can do this to you. He’s supposed to love you. He cried. He cried so hard and I had to hold him sometimes, and I don’t understand…” Then she was sobbing for real, the way she hadn’t ever that whole summer before Spike had come back.

Buffy let the curly straw slip from her mouth, swallowing the juice she had in her mouth and licking the spare drops from around her lips. “Dawn,” she said carefully, not least because she didn’t know what to say. “It’s OK, you know? I’m OK.”

“But you’re not,” Dawn cried again, feebly. “You’re bleeding.”

Buffy shut her eyes. It wasn’t something she’d ever wanted Dawn to know, how many things in her life there were that were worse than bleeding.

“I know,” she allowed. “And I’m gonna bleed a hundred times again before I…” Her sister’s sobs paused, the tears leaking a slow and steady stream: Buffy knew that she was listening. “This time around, I know it was the First and – and it was some stupid, interfering dragon bitch – and I know that even they couldn’t push Spike as far as they wanted him to go. I know he’ll wish that I would let you burn him, so that he could escape for a moment from the guilt. And that’s…”

When she trailed off, Dawn pulled back, apparently picking up on something in her voice. “Buffy,” she said, and for a moment she was strong again, “that’s not romantic. That’s…” She seemed lost for words. “That is fucked up.”

What should have been dismay to hear her sister use that language swirled through Buffy in a strong pulse of lethargy. Something popped in her head and it pounded, pulling her to take another slug from her straw. “I know, Dawn,” she said, staring into the distance, which was really just the kitchen doorway. “But I don’t think it’s me and Spike,” she said with conviction, soft though her words were. “I think it’s the world we live in. The roles we’re made to play. Without them, we’re…”

Buffy looked down, not entirely willing to complete that thought.

“Hey,” said another voice. Buffy glanced around. It was Xander, standing with Anya just in front of the basement door. From the expression on his face, it wasn’t entirely clear how much they’d overheard. “The Evil Dead’s sleeping it off,” he reassured her. “He’s got a lump on his head the size of a blimp.”

“Good,” Buffy replied, not sure which part she was approving.

* * *

After another long drink and even longer sleep, Buffy came downstairs to find Spike exactly how she feared. He was awake like usual for the afternoon, but that day he was sitting on the edge of the cot, head in his hands.

“We need to fix this,” Buffy told him. It was hard, being so blunt with him. When he looked up, Spike’s eyes were rimmed red and he looked old enough to be his own age. It stung Buffy’s eyes, moreso than the wound underneath her shiny new morning dressing. “Althanea’s spell; we’ve gotta do it.”

Strangely, this suggestion seemed to piss Spike off, at least once it had sunk in. He rose to his feet, taking two strides towards her. “What we _need_ ,” he spat at her, voice almost broken, “is for _you_ to shove a piece of wood through my bloody chest.”

“Maybe someday,” Buffy agreed, even as the thought ripped her in two . “But not now.”

This seemed to shock him. Buffy almost rolled her eyes, wondering how much she would give to stop everyone around her always reaching for the drama. She came closer, her footsteps silent on concrete – but Spike backed away. “You don’t…” he said, his expression closing off again. “I don’t know why you let me…”

“I don’t _let_ you do anything!” Buffy blew up, annoyed. Spike’s big, wide hangdog eyes were straight back on her, set off by the bruised lump at his hairline. She could almost see the irises yellow.

Honestly, she got it. She really did. She knew Spike was terrified of himself and the things he’d done and it would take time, always time, for him to figure out how to be in this new world order. But looking at him standing there, not afraid of what she would do but actually what she wouldn’t, Buffy couldn’t figure out how she was supposed to help him.

The thing was, she was scared for him. They were in a war, but it almost didn’t seem to matter that everything in her wanted them both to survive, because time and time again, this time not least, it felt like she was the only one fighting. And Buffy knew she should say all of this. She knew that the best way to make her point was to cross the floor, take him in her arms like she wanted to and tell him all of this _stuff_ , the stuff she’d told Dawn. At the same time, where would that leave them? How would it help? Really, there was no use for her fear.

When everything was said and done, Buffy always figured it made sense to go on the offensive, so it was on the offensive she went. “Do you remember what happened?” she demanded from Spike, not long after the echo had died from her complaint. She took another step into the basement. “Do you? Huh? Or is the memory wipe still active as well?”

Yet again, Spike dropped his eyes, practically shuffling his feet as far as Buffy could tell. “I bit you…” he murmured, like she didn’t have the bite marks to know it just as well.

After the last time, Buffy remembered promising herself that she would never yell at Spike again, but this was how much her promises were worth and why she didn’t say them out loud. “Right!” she told him bluntly, nodding. “And am I dead?”

Spike frowned, crossing his arms. “That’s not the point,” he muttered darkly, at least sounding a little surer of himself.

“No,” Buffy agreed. On another day, in another world, she might have let herself reminisce about her sniffedy encounter with demon Spike, but that wasn’t the point. “The point is…” Even if it had been kind of hot, in a really disturbing way. “The point _is_ ,” she forced herself to say, hands-on-hips and glaring across the basement into the gloom, “we have to move forward. No looking back.”

Silence fell, and the air hung with that feeling Buffy got at the end of her speeches. Like it was all too easy, all too perfect – until…

“I can still taste you, you know,” Spike suddenly shot back at her, jaw set and eyes narrowed as he looked up. It made her stomach clench. “I can feel you,” he continued, accusingly, before he sucked long and hard on his teeth. “Yeah… One full proof shot of Buffy blood, running down my throat.”

“So what?” Buffy challenged him, tossing her hair as her heartbeat pattered into her awareness.

Spike was unpredictable; that was the thing about him – he got mood swings. Buffy meant to forget it, but now he was prowling towards her, like he was gonna try and scare her. They’d been through this before, but she was glad to go through it again. She was glad to go through anything to get him beyond the moping. When he came to a halt, about an arm’s length away, Buffy was happy to have him there. “Aren’t you the least bit concerned,” he asked her nonetheless, “that I might go looking for another taste?”

They’d been physical with each other recently, at least so far as Buffy figured. Not as physical as they’d been a year ago, or in the years before that, but enough. It wasn’t right to spill her heart out, she knew that, but pinned down by the midnight blue of his eyes, feeling the grin that spread across her face – Buffy couldn’t feel guilty about touching him.

“No.” Closing the gap between them, the leather of her boots creaking slowly, Buffy relished the opportunity to cradle Spike’s face in _her_ bandaged hand and press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. As the moment held, it made him tremble, and for one blissful instant if felt like everything might be OK.

Of course, it wasn’t enough.

“ _Why?_ ” Spike demanded when it was over. Buffy corrected herself from what she’d thought before: he sounded broken, and he looked it. Pulled back so that he was standing directly under the fluorescent light, she could see every shadow lining his face, the ghosts and the memories that haunted him. “I don’t…” he added, almost laughing as he ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand why.”

Looking at him, the vampire who’d tried to rape her – the vampire who’d brutalised her and her friends – Buffy wasn’t sure she fully understood it either. Every box that she could check, she was checking it. It couldn’t be that there was no one else out there for her; it couldn’t be that he was the only one who would ever understand.

The part of her who’d been looking up psychology websites in her lunch hour, referencing her old textbook so she felt like she was even marginally qualified to do her job, it made her feel like there was something going on with just how much trauma they’d shared together. This guy, standing in front of her, he’d watched her die and been there when she’d come back. He’d been the razor she’d cut herself with and borne the scars so her skin could stay clear of everything but bruises.

It should have been a huge, co-dependent mess that lay between them. There were times when it had been. In some ways it probably still was. But she was lonely, and tired, and they were both still fighting the battle she always would be. She honestly didn’t much care about the rest.

“The way I see it,” Buffy finally responded, brushing her hair from her eyes, “the why isn’t all that important.” Spike was hanging on her every word and she couldn’t bear how awkward it was between them. His head was at an awkward angle; his arms dangled awkwardly at his sides. Herself, she couldn’t figure out how to set her feet or why she was crossing her arms – why she was gesturing with one hand to snatch at nothing. The basement was too big; they were in the wrong part of it. “We are who we are, so all we can do is try, I guess, to make the best of it.”

She’d hoped the suggestion would make Spike grin. Buffy wanted him to break through all of this, come and meet her the way it didn’t work when she tried to meet him. She wanted his mouth to crack around his teeth, his eyes to crinkle, every part of him that was harrowed by this to soften out and accept her.

Of course he didn’t. “You actually still want to take a trip inside my head?” Spike asked, the red circles around his eyes hollowing his face into a skull.

“Well,” Buffy replied, wishing it would come out flirty. Mostly it came out flippant. “It’s been so long since I had a vacation.”

“You can’t,” Spike shut her down, shaking his head like it hurt him. He pulled away. “Not in here, not after what I’ve done. Please don’t make me…”

The words wouldn’t come to Buffy’s mouth, not for a moment. Somehow she knew it, that this was the wrong way. They would get nowhere while Spike wasn’t willing to risk her, or else to risk himself. At the same time, she didn’t know how to articulate that thought; what was she supposed to say that wouldn’t come out like a command?

“If there has to be someone else,” Spike continued, like the serious, risk-averse creature he had never been, “then someone else can go in here.” He turned away, dramatic and moody as anything, but also, Buffy somehow knew, he was unwilling to watch as he hurt her. Which he did a moment later, when he said, “Get the witch to send in that Lydia bird. She’s seen it all before.”

Thing was, if he’d looked her in the eye it might not have hurt so much.

.


	10. PART THREE (intermezzo)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part ritually abuses things from all over the place, as you will see, including scripts by David Fury, Drew Goddard, Doug Petrie, the Joss himself, Jane Espenson and Stephen DeKnight, as well as all the wonderful people who've ever put transcripts up on [Buffyworld.com.](http://www.buffyworld.com/)
> 
> * * *

> I submit the following report that on the 26th February, 2003, I held a mental interview with William Aurelius, also known as William the Bloody and also known as Spike. The interview was conducted in Sunnydale, California, at the house of the Slayer Miss Buffy Summers, 1630 Revello Drive, and was supervised by Althanea Travers, a Friend of the Council. At the time of writing, I have reduced access to appropriate reference works, not least on the approved format for such reports. However, the below presents the encounter as clearly as I am able, including events seen as they were called to mind by the subject, our verbal discussion and more documentary memories I came to acquire. I have offered commentary where pertinent.
> 
> L.E. Chalmers, February 2003

  


**INT. LONDON TOWNHOUSE – 1880 – DAY**

WILLIAM stands across from a frail, sickly, elderly woman, sitting on a large upholstered chair in the upscale, elegantly furnished parlour; a handkerchief is clutched in her hand. This is Spike's mother, ANNE.

  
**WILLIAM**  
(reading)  
Yet her smell, it doth linger, painting pictures in my mind.  
Her eyes, balls of honey. Angel’s harps her laugh.  
Oh, lark. Grant a sign if crook’d be Cupid's shaft.

Anne listens raptly, a gentle smile on her face, her needle-point lying on the arm rest next to her. A jug of water and a glass are on the end table beside her.

  
**WILLIAM**  
(continuing)  
Hark, the lark, her name it hath spake.  
“Cecily” it discharges from twixt its wee beak. [1]  


He pauses, then glances up at Anne, indicating he is finished. She stares at him a moment.

  
**ANNE**  
Oh, William....

**WILLIAM**  
It’s just scribbling. [2]

**ANNE**  
Nonsense. It is magnificent.

He eyes her sceptically, shaking his head. Then, enthusiastically pleased, he sits on the sofa beside her.

  
**ANNE**  
(continuing)  
I wonder, though. This Cecily of whom you write so often...

**WILLIAM**  
Oh.

**ANNE**  
Would she be the Underwood's eldest girl? [3]

**WILLIAM**  
(embarrassed)  
Oh, no. Oh – no. I do not presume.

**ANNE**  
She's lovely. You shouldn't be alone. You need a woman in your life.

He looks at her.

  
**WILLIAM**  
I have a woman in my life.

**ANNE**  
(intrigued)  
But you ne—  
(understanding)  
Oh... [4]

**WILLIAM**  
Well, do not mistake me. (I still have hopes that one day there will be an addition to this household.  
But I will always look after you, mother. This, I promise. [5]  


Anne smiles, looks at him with love.  
Anne begins to COUGH. She covers her mouth with her handkerchief. William jumps to his feet and brings her the glass of water, helps her as she gasps it down, soothing her tortured throat. It is then he catches sight of the blood stain on her the handkerchief in her hand.

  
**WILLIAM**  
Should I send the coach for Doctor Gull? [6]

**ANNE**  
(recovering)  
I'll be all right. It's passed. Just sit with me a while, will you?

**WILLIAM**  
Of course.

He sits on the floor at his mother's feet, resting against her legs. Anne picks up her needle-point again and starts to resume her work as she begins to sing, softly, sweetly...

  
**ANNE**  
(singing)  
Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I heard a maid sing in the valley below.  
“Oh, don't deceive me. Oh, never leave me. How could you use a poor maiden so?” [7]  


William closes his eyes and listens to his mother sing.

* * *

I **saw** a fair maid **dance** not **that** so far a **way**  
and **I** , a **wast** rel, caught her **eye** a kismet **time**  
to **ask** her **name**. To make this **girl** one of **mine**  
would **take** me **years** , and nonethe **less** I **say**  
that **mo** ment was the **ve** ry **death** of **me**.  
We **danced** in **grime** and empty **sha** dows **dark**  
like **cin** ders, **ash** that broke my very **breath** a **part**  
and **set** all this for **got** ten **won** der **free**.  
This **girl** , she **cured** me of my **ills** , and **yet**  
too many **thou** sands **more** I **found** be **got** ,  
those **times** we **fucked** and **I** for **got**  
the **way** a lack of **soul** can **yet** for **get**.  
The **want** that **burns** in **side** a lonely **heart** ,  
it **scrapes** at **good** ness, burns it **all** to **black**.

* * *

It’s **al** ways difficult to **know** the **truth** of every **thing** ,  
the **way** your heart’s des **ire** might **right** now **seem**  
against what’s **come** be **fore** and yet is **still** to **be**.  
This **sense** you always **have** of that un **bro** ken **string**  
of **self** hood **tears** , and **rips** you into **two**.  
The **re** conciliation **all** re **mains** a **dream** ,  
one **part** of it **lies** ; the other **part** of it **true**  
as **hope** all glimmers **bright** and **subt** le **gleams** ,  
be **wit** ching as my **heart’s** long **emp** ty **beats**.  
**Buf** fy; **Buf** fy; my **heart** cannot en **treat**  
with any stronger **fee** ling to **our** **troub** led **past**  
when **I** am on my **own** , my **eyes** down **cast** ,  
this **old** , ragged **soul’s** no **more** a pana **cea**  
than your **eve** ry word of **com** fort **I** might yet **hear**.

* * *

I **know** the way you **feel** in **side** ,  
your tender **heart** and **sil** ken **blood**  
as it **drains** down my **throat**. Not sure I **could**  
find the **hol** low, wormy **words** to fully de **scribe**  
the symphony of **you** bound **up** with **me**.  
For so many **years** I’ve tried to **craft** what I’ve **had**  
with **you** ; it’s **drove** me **mad**  
to long for **some** thing that I **thought** couldn’t **be**.  
There’s nothing **else** , as far as **I** can **see** ;  
there’s **no** thing **more** , to physically **know**  
or to **long** for in some **ar** dent **dream**.  
And **yet** , I’ve got these **hopes** , one, two and **three** ,  
for you to **love** me, let that **fee** ling **grow** ,  
and **tell** me, **make** it like it’s never **been**.

* * *

**Your mother clearly means a lot to you. What do you remember about your father?**

What, Henry the Pratt? Not much. The bloke was a waste of space. His father, my grandpapa, he made a load of cash for himself in the new world – and fair play to him – and then he died young, the way people in industry did in those days. That left Henry and Grandmama with not much to do but bore New York for a few years, before one of them got the bright idea to send HPP over for an English university education. He met Mother, she went back with him, and they had me in the ‘50s. I had one sister who died in infancy, but otherwise he didn’t seem that bothered to flesh out the family tree.

I think he was a poof, if I’m honest. I reckon Gull knew and he kept the secret, which is how I came to be named after him.

And to each his own, I suppose, but I always felt badly for Mother, even if I never figured it while I was alive. I tried all that once anyway, and it didn’t seem that special. It was around the Wilde trials, whenever that was, late ‘90s? Angelus was in it for the Irish bloke taking on the toffs; I was in it for his early poems, which I had rather favoured during life. We thought a bit of gross indecency would suit us quite well. It was all political. The four of us were tanked up on absinthe and opium most of the time, gearing up for the fin de siècle, and Dru kept moaning about Paris, so the sex hadn’t been great for a while. Of course, this bit with Angelus did even less for me and Darla acted like we were being children. I left the opium for tobacco after that, and that got me through to the 1960s, by which point I’d forgotten Dru was not fun on drugs, but mostly what you saw were these deep, ragged scars inside her that fucking hurt to look at. I think we had our best times in Florence, you know, right before. Should’ve stayed there.

But my father never saw anything of Europe. He didn’t know what to do with culture, or numbers or conversation. I read Classics to spite him. By the time I left school, he was starting to worry the money would run out – and of course he’d done nothing to make sure he would know what was up and what was down with investments – so he wanted me to get myself yoked to the prospect of his later dotage, fix it so he could cop it on a velvet cushion. Never mind that Mother had started showing signs and he wouldn’t even make the boat trip.

Thankfully I had some chums who had it all sorted without Father even needing to know. Shrewsbury might have been a brutal place, but they looked after you. I missed Mother fiercely, and even Grandmama’s more laconic outbursts – Father was ashamed of her, but she’d grown up on a farm and was bloody brilliant sometimes. Once when I was about six we had this woman round the house who made a big fuss about a fly in her soup or something equally trivial, and Grandmama’s response was this line, ‘But in the end it’s all swill for swine, ain’t it?’ I never forgot it; she swapped their plates and ate the soup, which did more to shut this woman up than trying to make her happy. There was none of that at school, but they fed you, housed you, fucked you up until you knew nothing better. They had nothing on Grandmama with a switch, of course. I had enough aristos in my house to figure out what needed to be done with capital. Years after they looked back on me like I was a fond memory; I missed some of them in London. Never missed Father.

**Do you think your mother lived a happy life?**

I think she did all right, at least before I killed her. I was never much use to the women around me.

**What makes you say that?**

What, you want me to spell it out?

**Yes.**

* * *

**EXT. SOUTH AMERICA – 1998 – NIGHT**

An outdoor café. SPIKE, in classic red and black, looks miserable. He is irritable and smoking up a storm. DRUSILLA, in cream and gold sits at a red taverna table, her rage contained, but not for long.

  
**SPIKE**  
(at the end of his tether)  
You're the one who keeps bringing her up! I haven't said a word about the bloody Slayer since we left California. She's on the other side of the planet, Dru! [8]

**DRUSILLA**  
(to her feet; finally losing it)  
But you're lying! I can still see her floating all around you, laughing.

Drusilla comes closer, resting her hands on Spike’s chest. The moment softens.

  
**DRUSILLA**  
(continuing)  
Why? Why won't you push her away?

**SPIKE**  
But I did, pet. I did it for you. You keep punishing me. Carrying on with creatures like this.

Standing to one side is a CHAOS DEMON. All slime and antlers. [9]

The demon speaks, the very picture of soft spoken reason.

  
**CHAOS DEMON**  
Okay, you guys obviously have a thing going on here…

They ignore him.

  
**DRUSILLA**  
I have to find my pleasures, Spike. You taste like ashes.

**SPIKE**  
So this is my fault now?

He gestures, “go away.” The demon heads out – but stops once and addresses Spike.

  
**CHAOS DEMON**  
I didn't know she was seeing somebody. (off Spike's look) I should take off.

**SPIKE**  
Yeah, why don't you do that?

The demon blows a kiss to Drusilla, then walks off.

  
**DRUSILLA**  
You can’t blame a girl, Spike. You're all covered with her. I look at you... all I see is the Slayer.

**SPIKE**  
(defensive)  
And whose fault is that? No sooner than he walked through the bleeding door… Sodding Angelus.

Drusilla turns away. It’s clear Spike doesn’t get it.

  
**SPIKE**  
(continuing)  
Hardly a surprise there’s nothing left of you on me, is it? You’ve barely touched me since…

**DRUSILLA**  
(to herself and the stars)  
Oh, love, there’s nothing I can do for you now. Ever since… There’s been three of us.

**SPIKE**  
(losing it again)  
Will you not come off it, Dru! You’re not Princess Di. You want to bring up my mother again, is that it? She’s been dead a hundred years!

This is a familiar argument, but Drusilla is ready to have it again. She turns back.

  
**DRUSILLA**  
And you’ve never let her go! Not for me. Spinning spiderwebs all around your heart, you let me watch them fade and wither, but it’s the Slayer who’s…

Spike reels, surprised by this level of venom.

  
**DRUSILLA**  
(continuing; gathering steam)  
I can see her! You let her pull on you, whisper in your ear. One thread after another on everything that was ever good inside you. Fish and eels swimming.

Spike is clearly baffled, if not a little terrified. Drusilla shakes her head, distraught before she SEES SOMETHING in the distant future. Spike approaches to comfort her, but she backs away – “don’t touch me.”

  
**DRUSILLA**  
(in the grip of a vision)  
No, no no… All of it’s floating, dandelion seeds; it can’t – ! Blood, so much blood it burns on stone… She’s there, [10] all this time, shielding you from darkness. You think it was you but it wasn’t, it should have been me. He’s burning up the edges so the smoke spins into rock. And the Slayer, the Slayer is laughing, she’s laughing as she twists those final strands into dust, lets you out, lets it all fade away.[11]  


She won’t allow Spike close to her. As the vision ends, she appears devastated.

  
**SPIKE**  
(not comprehending)  
Dru… Love – what?

**DRUSILLA**  
(you traitor)  
Get away. (stronger) Get away. (crying) GET AWAY!

He’s spooked, but he can see he’s being banished. He makes for his car, taking out his rage on the door before he casts one look back at Drusilla. He knows his destination.

* * *

I love Dru. I always loved Dru. I’ll love her till I’m dust. Didn’t tell her half as often as I should have, but she was so batty that most of the time she wouldn’t have understood it. Probably the last time I told her, it was right before the end of it, in Prague. We’d been staying at this hotel, having a grand old time of it, and we’d been planning for the last night where we were going to go next. We’d given them the details of a lifted credit card, and thought we’d do our usual and walk out to see what would happen. Of course, what we’d actually find was a mob waiting for us right on the square, but the joke was that this time around – for all our planning of a bloodbath – we decided we’d had a nice enough stay that we’d leave the place standing. So we could come again, you know?

I told her on the balcony of our suite, after she’d pulled in Miss Edith from where she was having her first punishment of hanging. Came out later that the doll hadn’t even spoken out of turn; Dru was in for months of agony from that night onwards. In that moment, though, it was all charming and balmy European nights, and I’d never met the Slayer, and I loved this girl at my side.

She didn’t say it back, Dru. Of course not. What she said was, ‘I love you’s a thing you say to people who are dying’. Or something like that. Haughty. I can never do her voice right.

I should have seen it then, of course. All the stuff she comes out with has a habit of making sense after the fact, but I never quite got the hang of figuring it out in advance. I’ve never known what she meant, whether she was talking about the mob or about Buffy and my feelings for her. She could have meant a hundred things, but she was so sad, right then, and I know it was my fault. In her mind, I always hurt her first. I’d abandoned her before she’d even met me.

**That seems quite unreasonable.**

It’s not unreasonable. It’s the way she sees the world. On the balance of things, when you’re immortal, what’s the greater betrayal? A fling with a demon that’ll never go anywhere, not when chaos demons are vegetarian and you have a taste for human viscera, not when no matter how you dress him up he’s not taking you up the Wolseley? Or the one where you fall for the killer of your kind, abandon your very nature and get yourself a soul? It burned at the time when she left me, but from my perspective now I figure that she’s right.

The part with her and Angelus… Well, it might take two to tango, but considering he practically nailed her feet in those dancing shoes with the thighbones of all her family, it takes a harder man than me to hold the full of that against her.

**What about Buffy? Equally wedded to Angel, if you pardon the expression; would you say she is in equal need of your care? Have you equally failed her?**

You want me to count the ways I’ve failed Buffy? Let’s see, I stalked her, I built a robot fetish of her body, I helped her sis raise a zombie version of her mum, I made her feel gratitude towards me, I made her weak, I made myself weak, I let Doc knock me off the tower, I let her hide from her friends, I let her hide from her misery, I beat her up, I showed her how to make sex something nasty, I pushed her, I degraded her, I wouldn’t let her go, I threatened her, I assaulted her, I made myself a burden to her, I asked for her help, I made her come and find me, I made her need me, and just recently I’ve sucked her blood from her veins. And that’s all after I fell in love with her.

Dru never needed my care any more than my mother did, any more than Buffy does. I’m a parasite that preys on kindness, the sort Buffy and Dru are both expert at burying deep inside. She’s beautiful, Dru, when she’s kind, like some sort of sprite lighting fires with her fingertips, the stars dancing in her eyes. Buffy, just… She doesn’t even know it, what she has inside her.

**One might say we are all parasitic on the people we love. But we’d be missing something. Are you suggesting that these women received nothing from you in return?**

* * *

**INT. BUFFY'S HOUSE – DOWNSTAIRS – 2001 – NIGHT**

The hero of the hour, BUFFY, is watching silently as a lowly vampire, SPIKE, retrieves weapons from the chest in her living room. The weight of the world is on her shoulders; Spike has just been reinvited and acting nervous.

Once he’s found what he needs, Spike returns, a couple of axes in hand like an offering.

  
**BUFFY**  
(hesitant)  
I'm counting on you – to protect her.

**SPIKE**  
(committed)  
‘Til the end of the world. Even if that happens to be tonight.

**BUFFY**  
(I’m glad that’s agreed.)  
I’ll be one minute. 

She starts up the stairs, but Spike isn’t done.

  
**SPIKE**  
I know you'll never love me. 

She turns, says nothing.

  
**SPIKE**  
(continuing)  
I know that I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man, and that’s...  
(stops himself; this is pathetic)  
Get your stuff. I'll be here. 

She pauses for the briefest of moments before she goes up.

At the top of the stairs, however, she doesn’t turn onto the landing. The pause becomes real.

  
**BUFFY**  
You get this is a losing game, right? 

Spike says nothing, and she turns back to face him.

  
**BUFFY**  
(continuing)  
I don’t just mean this, with Glory. [12] I mean me.

**SPIKE**  
(you’re an idiot)  
I’ll be here. Get your stuff. 

Contrary as ever, Buffy takes a step back down towards him.

  
**BUFFY**  
You could go anywhere. Do anything.

**SPIKE**  
Yeah. (scoffs) And when your Scoobies cock it up and I’m out there in Hawaii, watching the world be sucked into darkness…

She takes another step down the stairs.

  
**BUFFY**  
I mean it. You don’t owe us anything. You don’t owe me anything.

**SPIKE**  
Well, no. Don’t make it a habit to rack up debts.

**BUFFY**  
I remember what you did for us, before. [13] This is… Bigger.

**SPIKE**  
It’s nothing. You know how I feel. I…

He’s been on the backfoot, but this thought gives him comfort. She pauses on the stairs.

  
**BUFFY**  
Don’t say it.

**SPIKE**  
(refusing to avoid it)  
I love you. 

It’s clear Buffy has no idea what to do with this. She avoids looking at him; says nothing. They both feel the intimacy of this moment, for the first time.

  
**SPIKE**  
(continuing)  
I don’t know what it is. What I could say to make it easier. But that’s the truth of it, why I’m here. Why I’m not going anywhere.

**BUFFY**  
(I’m counting on you)  
I don’t want anything from you.

**SPIKE**  
(I know)  
And yet you’ve got it. 

They look at each other for one long beat.

Flustered, Buffy turns away and quickly takes the last few stairs again.

  
**BUFFY**  
(trying for casual)  
I’ll only be a minute, I promise. Stay right here. 

He watches her go.

* * *

**INT. BUFFY'S HOUSE – FOYER – 2001 – NIGHT**

SPIKE is standing in the entryway as DAWN comes downstairs. He's just recovering from near-panic.

  
**SPIKE**  
(to Dawn)  
Thank God. You scared me half to death... or more to death. You – I could kill you.

**DAWN**  
Spike.

**SPIKE**  
I mean it. Could rip your head off one-handed and drink from your brain stem.

**DAWN**  
Look. 

He sees BUFFY coming down the stairs behind Dawn.

  
**SPIKE**  
Yeah? I've seen the bloody bot before. [14] Didn't think she'd patch up so--

He stops. Stunned, staring at Buffy. For a very long beat.

  
**DAWN**  
She's kind of-- She's been through a lot, with the ... death. But I think she's okay. 

He’s still staring.

  
**DAWN**  
(continuing)  
Spike? Are you okay? 

* * *

**INT. BUFFY'S HOUSE – FOYER – 2002 – NIGHT**

The house is empty, quiet, but the lights are on. SPIKE looks up at the stairwell ahead of him, then back to the front door behind him, as if he isn’t sure how he came to be there. He looks down at himself, sniffs and recoils from the smell.

  
**SPIKE**  
(muttering to himself)  
And why are you acting so strangely, William? [15]  


There is the CREAK OF A FLOORBOARD upstairs. Spike is distracted, knowing who that must be. In an attempt to make himself presentable, he wrestles out of his coat and dumps it over the bannister. He sweeps a hand through his hair; rests it on the newel post; steels himself.

* * *

**INT. BUFFY'S HOUSE – FOYER – 2002 – NIGHT**

SPIKE stands at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the newel post. Beside him, over the bannister, is the blanket he was wrapped in earlier. He’s staring at it. The Scoobies are in the living room, out of sight. Their voices are hushed, but just about audible.

  
**WILLOW (O.S.)**  
I guess the question’s whether he remembers anything.

**ANYA (O.S.)**  
Yeah, and whether he’s gonna talk about it if he does.

**DAWN (O.S.)**  
I still don’t get it…

**XANDER (O.S.)**  
Dawn, d’you guys have any saran-wrap? Or maybe plastic sheeting? There’s tape in my car, but…

The continued conversation is covered by the noise of BUFFY coming back downstairs. She’s hurrying, pulling to a halt just ahead of Spike, a little flustered and out of breath. Spike looks surprised to see her, but doesn’t much react.

  
**BUFFY**  
Sorry. I guess that was longer than a minute. 

Spike says nothing. Buffy looks embarrassed, apparently not just about keeping him waiting.

  
**BUFFY**  
(excusing herself)  
I don’t get that much time to tidy my room and I wasn’t expecting a…

She trails off; they both realise this conversation is inappropriate. Spike moves his hand to the blanket. It’s shaking.

  
**SPIKE**  
(hating himself)  
You shouldn’t have to do this. 

In the sudden grip of action, he turns to leave –

  
**BUFFY**  
Hey. 

– but he doesn’t get far. She comes down the last step, reaches out a hand, maybe grazes his shoulder.

  
**BUFFY**  
(continuing)  
We’re gonna figure this out. (as Spike hesitates) Come on. 

* * *

OMITTED[16]

* * *

**INT. BUFFY'S HOUSE – UPSTAIRS BATHROOM – 2002 – NIGHT**

SPIKE flies across the room shoulder first, smashing midway up the opposite wall, cracking the plaster and crashing to the floor. BUFFY struggles to her feet by the bathtub, clutching her robe around her and trembling with fear, but spitting with fury.

  
**BUFFY**  
Ask me again why I could never love you. 

He looks up at her, realising how far he just crossed the line.

  
**SPIKE**  
Buffy, my god... I didn't --

**BUFFY**  
Because I stopped you. Something I should have done a long time ago.

Spike can muster no response, the weight of his actions crushing down on him. Buffy doesn’t move; a loose tear makes its way down her cheek.

The silence that follows is long. Spike stares into the distance while Buffy stares down at her attacker, but the initial shock slowly, surely passes. By the end of it, Spike barely has the strength to hold himself. Of course Buffy remains wary, but she is in control, more like the Slayer mid-battle than the woman mid-trauma.

They speak as though they have aged years.

  
**SPIKE**  
(to the middle distance)  
I’m sorry. Christ, I’m sorry. 

Another tear escapes Buffy’s eyes. She recognises that vacant stare, but wishes that she didn’t.

  
**BUFFY**  
I know. 

Spike is petrified. It shouldn’t be possible. Buffy knows that too.

  
**BUFFY**  
(continuing)  
I –

This moment of understanding is interrupted as we hear –

  
**XANDER (O.S.)**  
Buffy! 

And the spell is broken. Both start like wounded animals. Spike pulls himself to his feet, clutching the wall behind him. Buffy jerks backwards as she glances over her shoulder. This thing is still happening and they have seconds.

  
**BUFFY**  
(panicked; to Spike)  
You can’t be in here. 

For a moment, Spike can’t move. He’s just caught a glimpse of what he in fact came here for and now Buffy is rejecting him again. His face clouds with frustration, even rage.

  
**XANDER (O.S.)**  
I found Warren. [17]  


Buffy is terrified, partly by the look on Spike’s face, partly by the confrontation yet to come. She is tearful and trembling – again – yanking her robe back into order.

  
**BUFFY**  
Get out! God damn you – get out. 

She turns to the door, imagining Xander on the stairs as she orders herself. The instant she’s tightened her belt she spins back – towards the other threat.

But Spike has vanished. In a burst of vampire speed he has escaped through the window – which is now open so the blind SKITTERS IN THE BREEZE.

Buffy moves towards it, to check he’s gone, but her legs won’t carry her more than a few steps. She’s overwhelmed. She reaches out blindly to the wicker unit by the sink and ultimately slumps down next to the bath, just so she can hold on to something solid.[18]

* * *

I was angry.

* * *

**Well. We are not here to discuss Buffy. We came here to discuss your mother. So?**

Sod off.

* * *

**INT. LONDON TOWNHOUSE – 1880 – NIGHT**

WILLIAM is on the verge of tears, while ANNE pushes closer to him.

  
**WILLIAM**  
No! 

He shoves her. Hard. She stumbles back. Grows cold.

  
**ANNE**  
Fine. Then gather up your tears and  
get out of my house.

**WILLIAM**  
Mother--

**ANNE**  
Get out!

* * *

I was angry with my friend:  
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.  
I was angry with my foe:  
I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

* * *

That’s not by me, by the way. That’s Blake.

**Of course. _A Poison Tree_ , from _Songs of Experience_. 1794. **

Get you. My mother loved Blake.

**And you?**

I hated half his metres.

**What of the message?**

Didn’t give a toss. I was eight.

* * *

I was angry with my friend:  
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.  
I was angry with my foe:  
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,  
Night and morning with my tears;  
And I sunned it with smiles,  
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,  
Till it bore an apple bright.  
And my foe beheld it shine.  
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole  
When the night had veiled the pole;  
In the morning glad I see  
My foe outstretched beneath the tree. 

* * *

**Indulge me. What relevance does this have to our current conversation?**

She’d have liked that I remember it.

**Our aim is to release you from the First Evil’s hold. The trigger. The apple borne of suppressed feeling.**

Does Buffy know you’ve read Giles’ diaries? That he published her after she died? Are they the reason you’ve got a problem with her? Because frankly, my dear, that’s not very fair.

**I do not have a problem with Buffy. I am a professional and she is the Slayer.**

I had no idea what I was doing, you know, when I turned Mother. Not a bleeding clue. I knew I had to drink her, because that how Dru had done me, but that was as far as I understood it. The whole business was new to me; I didn’t understand what the bite meant, why Dru was so disgusted. She was jealous, of course she was, and she got off on calling herself my mum for years before and since, but it wasn’t the same as sharing that experience of beautiful death with your own flesh and blood.

She helped me because it was what I wanted. I panicked when I had a dead body in my arms but she told me what to do, tore a nail through my wrist. It had to be my blood, you see, because I’d drunk her. It’s the mingling of blood that does it, and I’d read enough Donne even then to know what that meant, but I did it anyway because I was a child and I didn’t know any better. I’d never had a whole human before and my head was crackling, everything in my body tingling with it, and I was a murderer, and it was my mother who’d given me this. It was gross indecency but I did it anyway. All I had wanted in life was to see my mother well again and have her with me, see the world with her so the smile would reach her eyes. It never did, and she so longed to travel. The bonds of her illness, of finances, of responsibility – Dru had released me from them and so I hoped to release her too.

I was a child. I’d never even met a Slayer; never even heard of them. I was a child and I didn’t know the way of things. Darla would be the one to teach me History; until then I thought I was some sort of Marquis de Sade, leading the French Revolution through scandal and bloodshed which could not be ignored. I didn’t know the truth of things.

When I fed her my blood, I thought it would be all right. It was sexual, when she drank from me, but I was inexperienced enough that I associated the feeling more with becoming a vampire than with what shouldn’t have been. Drusilla shouldn’t have let me, really, but she was only just not a fledge herself and mad as all get out. Back then Angelus could still set her gibbering for months. He liked to relive his glory days, like a fucking football hero, and Darla was willing to roll her eyes and make the tea come to us while he tortured her inside and out, made her think she was good again just so he could make her bad. She didn’t know it either, what it meant; it wasn’t her fault. She was kind to me, because she knew it was what I wanted. I knew what I was, from that night on, but it took her years to see it; she only wanted a protector. She didn’t understand what that kindness meant.

* * *

**INT. CEMETERY CHAPEL – 2002 – NIGHT**

SPIKE is walking towards a huge crucifix altarpiece. BUFFY watches, still in shock.

  
**SPIKE**  
She shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved. 

He pauses.

  
**SPIKE**  
So everything's OK, right? 

Slowly, Spike embraces the crucifix, resting one arm over each side of the cross bar, and resting his head in the corner of the vertex. His body is sizzling and smoke is rising from where it touches the cross.

  
**SPIKE**  
Can—can we rest now, Buffy? Can we rest? 

For a long beat, Buffy is still caught up in her shock, watching. Then on the flick of a switch she runs forward, wrestling Spike down.

  
**BUFFY**  
What do you think you’re – doing? 

They stagger backwards as Spike throws her off. He turns around, his chest heaving. It’s raw, blistering, peelings; the last thread of smoke trails behind him back to the cross. He screams at her.

  
**SPIKE**  
NO! 

Buffy has no idea what to do. She is shaking.

  
**SPIKE**  
(continuing)  
You can’t do this! Don’t make it real! 

He sobs, but it doesn’t quite work and becomes a laugh instead.

  
**BUFFY**  
(losing it, but not without pity)  
Stop it! Stop acting crazy!

**SPIKE**  
(forcefully; afraid now)  
She shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved – and then from beneath you… From beneath you it devours.

* * *

**INT. BASEMENT AT SUNNYDALE HIGH – 2002 – DAY**

SPIKE is sitting hunched against a chainlink fence, talking to BUFFY. She kneels very close to him. He seems lucid.

  
**SPIKE**  
I don’t trust what I see anymore. I don't know how to explain it, exactly. It’s like I've been seeing things. 

She nods compassionately.

  
**SPIKE**  
(continuing)  
Dru used to see things, you know? She’d always be staring up at the sky watching cherubs burn or the heavens bleed or some nonsense. I used to stare at her and think she’d gone completely sack of hammers. But she’d see the sky when we were inside and it’d make her so happy. She’d see showers. She’d see stars. Now I see her. 

* * *

**Stop this. You are being melodramatic.**

If you wanted a stiff upper lip you should’ve stayed in your own bloody head.

* * *

Forgotten ashes fall on hyacinths  
to wrest asunder soul from mortal heart.  
I wait, I wait for you to recognise  
the ragged scars my kindness cuts on yours.  
Too kind you were to greet me with a kiss  
while I still burden you, will not depart. 

* * *

**I went to a girls’ school. Boarding. This is worse than any of our diaries.**

Well, then, get out, why don’t you?

**Do you not realise how ridiculous this is? Every time you convince a woman you love to do you kindness, you do something wrong and destroy their love for you? No, not actually.**

What –

**You transformed your mother into a demon. At some point you must face up the fact that this was not an act of kindness, but an act of murder, which inevitably darkened your mother’s personality. Drusilla is quite mad, and you seem content to believe that she responds to events which have not yet in fact occurred – how, then, your actions may be found at the source of any chain of causality I do not know. Buffy, as far as I can appreciate, spends more time starring in the narratives of your imagination than offering any verbal cue as to her feelings. I should concern yourself less with taking responsibility for her actions and worry more for your own delusional fantasies.**

So this is it, is it? All the wisdom of the Watchers’ Council and this is what you come up with?

**You experienced trauma. All vampires do. A woman rejected your love and you found strength, a new life, a higher purpose. At the same time, the woman who had loved you unerringly was left dead by your hand and another demon found its deliverance. So the cycle repeats. So the gentle soul Drusilla found to be her salvation turned his back on her and decreed his mistress too dark and broken to love. So vampirism promulgates. So psychologically damaged people are divorced from their conscience and left to roam the world with nothing but bloodlust and superpowers.**

Aren’t you the one who thinks I’m special?

**If you had read my thesis you would realise I discuss your biography as the microcosm for a theoretical examination of soullessness during the Victorian crisis of faith and ensuing growth of secularism in the British Isles. You are paradigmatic, not exceptional. It was my examiners who thought the opposite.**

Tear a bloke down, why don’t you…

**You are not incapable of charm, when you are not psychologically transparent.**

Ta, pet.

**But will you stop imagining your mother as the project of your own sin and try to see things from her point of view?**

I… What?

[The interview terminates.]

* * *

  1. Like much of William Pratt’s poetry, it is clear that this composition resists quantitative metre and relies instead on an irregular four-beat pattern, principally anapestic in nature with the stress at the end of the foot. The pattern of caesurae is reasonably regular, in a manner familiar from P’s other poems. Notably, however, the beloved’s name disrupts this, marking her significance as the only fully reversed foot. It may be scanned thus:

Yet her **smell** ,/ it doth **lin** /ger, || painting **pict** /ures in my **mind**.  
Her **eyes** ,/ balls of **ho** /ney. || Angel's **harps** / her **laugh**.  
Oh, **lark**./ Grant a **sign** / || if **crook’d** / be Cupid's **shaft**.  
**Hark** ,/ the **lark** ,/ || her **name** / it hath **spake**.  
“ **Ce** cily”/ it dis **char** /ges || from **twixt** / its wee **beak**.  
( Dactyl, anapest, anapest, anapest.)

One may confer the sestet of P’s final sonnet (after Percival 1881), which is principally iambic:

My **soul** / is **wrap** /ped || in **harsh** / re **pose** ;  
Mid **night** / des **cends** / || in **ra** /ven-coloured **clothes** ,  
But **soft** ,/ be **hold**!/ || A **sun** /light **beam**  
**Cut** ting/ a **swath** / || of **glim** /mering **gleam**.  
( Trochee, iamb, iamb, anapest.)  
My **heart** / ex **pands** ,/ || ‘tis **grown** / a bulge in **it** ,  
in **spi** /red **by** / your **beau** /ty, || ef **ful** gent.

Again it is the intervention of the beloved’s beauty which disrupts the iambic metre. Work remains to be done on this habit of P’s prosody. ^^

  2. As the latest research on memory shows, one does not remember the precise reality of the past, rather one’s recollection of that moment, and so on and so on. Among vampires this has often been found to produce rather anachronistic memoires, including moments of contemporary discourse such as this. Cf. Giles (2001b:42ff; 2001e:78ff.) for discussion of William the Bloody’s interest in ‘railroad spikes’. ^^
  3. Cecily Underwood is of course unknown to records of births, marriages and deaths of the late nineteenth century. See Chalmers (1995:52ff.). _pace_ Hamilton (1980:62f.), the hypothesis that Cecily Underwood was the alias of the vengeance demon responsible for the Aitken incident remains likely. The question remains whether it was by prophecy, bad luck or an earlier episode yet unknown that P suffered from so many supernatural creatures in 1880. Oladapo (forthcoming) provides crucial further discussion of the congruence in supernatural activity which may be found throughout the historical record. ^^
  4. Giles (2001b:302) hypothesises that the relationships between William the Bloody and Drusilla Aurelius was the cause of many irregularities during the former’s initial period of terror in Sunnydale, 1997-1998. Despite the analysis of Hamilton (1980 _passim_ ), it certainly seems the case that Drusilla was B’s committed companion throughout much of the twentieth century (see Chalmers 1995:96f.). The influence of P’s mother on this relationship remains difficult to assess, though of course many have remarked on the role of carer which structured B’s relationship to D, including Hu (1982 [1900]) and Giles (2001b), both _passim_. As analysed by Hlavaček (1998), D has long been recognised to refer to vampiric relationships in human terms, connoting sire to father or else mother and so on; it seems reasonable to surmise, therefore, that B would have been imagined by D to hold much the same position as P did his mother when he was in the care of her. This upholds Hamilton’s Oedipal analysis of B’s antagonism towards Angelus, but one must be wary of retrojecting such psychological insight into B onto P. Whether B has been able to resist such analysis is naturally uncertain. ^^
  5. In the introduction to Giles (2001e:ii), the author remarks that B remains in Sunnydale ‘because he promised Buffy [Summers], apparently, that he would look after Dawn [the Slayer’s sister] until the end of the world’. Whether this is a reference to the literal or figurative apocalypse is unknown, but it is worth noting this parallel declaration of care for ‘always’. As I will discuss further below, again, it certainly seems that P’s relationship to his mother may be seen to structure a number of B’s relations to women or else female companions. ^^
  6. After the painstaking analysis of Hamilton (1980:18ff.), it seems that Gull was an acquaintance of P’s father at the University of London, 1838-1841. Although P was to study at Cambridge (Pembroke College, 1871-1874), Henry Pratt never seems to have reached the same heights of society as Gull. As I discuss in Chalmers (1995:xi ff.), P almost certainly spent his early life in New York prior to his attendance at Shrewsbury School, 1866-1871. One may surmise that the families remained in close acquaintance, and P was a relatively close contemporary of Gull’s daughter Caroline Cameron (1851-1929). ^^
  7. Cf. Chappell (1840:77), in which _Early One Morning_ is the eighty-third ‘national English air’. Without question, this folk song is familiar from anthologies which date back into the eighteenth century, so it is impossible to know how it came into Anne Pratt’s knowledge. However, it is tempting to imagine that Anne took Chappell’s volume with her as a comfort during her relocation to America, which would identify the song as one which expresses the concerns of national dislocation as well as Henry Pratt’s apparent later disinterest in Anne, as led to her relocation into Shropshire and finally London. ^^
  8. The source of this altercation may be adduced from Giles (2001c:84f.), in a discussion of B’s return to Sunnydale late in 1998. It is believed that B and the Slayer established an informal truce during the Acathla incident, which among other things allowed B access to the Slayer’s home residence and conversation with her mother, Joyce Summers. He used this privilege in November 1998 for what seems to have been ‘no more than cocoa and sympathy’. It is reasonable to suggest that this kind treatment of S’s mother follows from B’s and P’s fondness for Anne Pratt. Unfortunately I was unable to follow up this line of enquiry during the interview. ^^
  9. The most extensive discussion of the δαίμων ἄκοσμος may be found in Grimm’s Almanac (1907). ^^
  10. This must be P’s mother, Anne. ^^
  11. It has long been speculated, not least by Hlavaček (1998), how frequent Drusilla’s visions are, or else if she receives any true visions as a vampire, rather than relying on fanciful description to confuse her prey. One might posit that clear visions are relatively rare: most seers report that they more commonly perceive a sense of things to come, hunches and insight, rather than a full sensory experience of a future event. Indeed, such visions frequently only occur once or twice in a seer’s lifetime. See Travers (1979). ^^
  12. For discussion of the goddess Glorificus, see the report by Higgins (2001). ^^
  13. This reference is uncertain. ^^
  14. For discussion of the robot facsimile of the Slayer, see Giles (2001e:i f.; 214ff.). ^^
  15. It is rare for B to refer to himself as P, though there is little evidence to suggest he sees P as a different entity from himself. One might hypothesise that B is speaking in quotation here, although it is only possible to speculate of whom. ^^
  16. The subject’s memories are too distorted here to suggest any reliable account. On his request I have not included the scene in my report. ^^
  17. It is possible this is a reference to Warren Mears, the creator of two android robots. See the discussion I referenced above on the robot of S, Giles (2001e:214ff.). ^^
  18. This is, of course, speculation. ^^



.


	11. PART FOUR (bodies)

> “Just tell me what this will do to me. Tell me what I need to do.”

  
**I**

\-- _the next time_ \--

It had been about a week since she’d woken up and groaned to get out of bed. It wasn’t too uncommon these days, but that morning, Buffy woke up in her own sheets, dressed in pyjamas of the sort a fashion-forward twenty-two year old would wear, and she felt it. Of course there was the crust of tears in her eyes, but also the sense of satisfaction that certain better aches brought with them. This time it came from pretty much every muscle between her hips. She felt hungry, wrung out, and mostly like she’d been fucked.

Thankfully, Buffy only needed to make the shower after everyone else had started training. That got her ready and into work with minutes still to spare.

Of course, this was the morning when work decided to behave like it was work-like, so the entire school was full of students who had Hellmouth problems.

“Miss Summers, please!” one of them ran towards her when she appeared. “Help me. I don’t know – Todd and I…” She was one of the cheerleaders, with a brunette ponytail and bangs. Her eyes were rimmed red from tears; she was looking at the floor. “We never before – it’s the only time – but everybody knows.” She whispered it in a confessional hiss, “They’re looking at me and _everybody knows_ …”

“Knows what?” Buffy asked the girl, trawling her memory bank for a name. Melanie? It was a good a guess as any. “Melanie, what’s happened?”

The girl sniffed and lifted her eyes. Buffy met them and suddenly she was hearing voices.

_“Gee, Todd, I don’t know…”_

_“Don’t be scared, Laney; get over here. You’ve seen my dick before.”_

_“Not like… It’s kinda – ooh, neato…”_

Buffy looked away, blushing. Nearly hysterical, Melanie was crying again. “You see!” she screeched, red with shame and embarrassment. “How do you know? _Why does everybody know?_ ”

Officially, Buffy wasn’t really allowed to touch the students. Faced with the distraught girl in front of her, though, there wasn’t much she could think to do apart from draw her into a hug.

The girl sobbed, and Buffy felt it like she was herself. This feeling of shame, it was easy, and she knew she could feel it in the wrong time and the wrong place.

_You scared, love?_

That was the thing, this time. Buffy had gone to him and it had been good. Different, for them, and the role-play had slipped a little sometimes, but they’d got the deed done. They’d needed it. She’d needed it. Now…

“You’ve gotta be strong,” Buffy promised the student, Melanie, holding the girl’s arms and shuddering as the sense memory of Spike’s cock crept over her fingers. “Sex is…” she tried for words. “Sex is weird, you know? Most of the people who say they’re doing it, they probably aren’t – and half the people you never think would be probably are.”

There. That was advice. For a moment, in this bright sunny hallway, it almost seemed to work. Melanie’s sobs only got worse, but it was at least like she was paying attention.

“Hey, hey…” Buffy tried to sooth her. “We’re told to be ashamed of it, you know?” she added, with more conviction. “We’re told to be so ashamed of it, at the same time we’re supposed to be ashamed of not getting any.”

_Fuck, Buffy, this isn’t right. I shouldn’t be – with you…_

_Is there something wrong with me, William? I thought… Do you not – do you…?_

_No, darling, no – shh…_

_Then why won’t you show me how?_

“People say it changes you,” Buffy told Melanie, because she felt it, she really did. The girl pulled back, covering her eyes and clearly embarrassed for hugging a pseudo-teacher. “You think it makes you different from who you were before. It’s bullshit,” she finished, even though she wasn’t officially allowed to swear in front of students either. “It’s a part of your relationship.”  
For a moment, the girl peeked out between her fingers – and the voices were back again:

_What… What will it do to me?_

_You’re gonna feel good, babe; I promise. You’re gonna feel…_

Buffy looked away and Melanie got it, shielding her traitorous eyes. “I wish I could believe you,” she finally said, her voice small as she looked down. Buffy’s heart broke. “I feel so…” She admitted it in barely a whisper, “I’m _different_.” She sounded lost. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen now. I don’t know who I’ve become.”

_Let it out, pet. There, that’s it. Thought you were in the moment – you should’ve said. What’s… What’s wrong?_

_Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. These are happy tears._

Before Buffy could reply, though, to try and prove the whole idea wrong, Melanie was running away into the high school corridors. Her eyes were downcast, but Buffy watched her go.

* * *

There was another test for Buffy’s conviction later, of course, when she and Principal Wood found themselves in the basement – again. Things were going hinky enough that it seemed like there could only be one cause, and so there was, in the form of the First Evil’s death metal seal. It was glowing, which seemed pretty unfair considering all the time Buffy had spent with a shovel covering it up.

Obviously, Robin thought it would be sensible and manly to investigate said seal, which resulted in him throwing around what he clearly thought was a gross accusation.

“You’re _screwing_ that vampire,” he swore.

From where she was examining the edge of the glow, Buffy looked up, startled. Robin was standing in the centre of the goat’s face, the full of his eyes bright white, and he was looking at her with more hate than anyone could measure. This was new. This was… This was interesting.

OK, so Buffy had been waiting for something like this. Really, from the moment she’d come up from the basement stairs there’d been a voice in her head telling her that something like this was coming. Someone was going to look at her with disgust in their eyes and the shame was going to swarm up from the inside of her gut and swallow her.

It was Robin, it seemed. He knew. He had to know.

Yet, as it was, Buffy didn’t really feel a thing. It wasn’t like there had been much screwing on Buffy’s part anyway, as things had turned out…

“Can you feel him corrupt you?” Wood continued to demand from her, his voice thick and polluted. “His seed setting root inside your flesh…”

The most interesting thing here, Buffy decided, looking down at him, was the sad and prurient way the First thought it could work its evil in this world.

“You wanna talk corruption?” Buffy challenged, tracing the glow of this particular bidet of evil. She walked steady footsteps around the pentagram, counting off the runes. The dragon would know, she thought, what all five of these meant. “How does it feel?” she asked Robin when she came to stand facing the tongue of Danzalthar’s goat. This was… This really was seriously interesting. “The Hellmouth licking at your heels. The First’s sway in this dimension.” The direct connection. Was it here? “Is it in you?” she tried to get an answer. “Is it in your body?” Would this be how…?

Wood was shaking with rage, and possibly something else. Whether it was the First’s or his own, Buffy wasn’t sure it entirely mattered. “You won’t deny it, how you let him touch you?” he continued. “You’re filth; a disgrace to the name. Do you know how I imagined…”

“OK!” Buffy interrupted, shaking herself from her thoughts. This was new information she had here, about how the seal worked, and she was grateful for it. Despite that, she wasn’t particularly interested in hearing Robin’s fantasies. “I think you’ve had enough evil for one day.”

Before Wood could figure out what she meant, Buffy rushed him – shoulder-first. Of course, he resisted, but it wasn’t nearly enough and with no effort at all Buffy had him free from the seal’s influence. He stumbled over the edge of the glowing dirt, crashing back into the wall as Buffy let him go. It wasn’t the most gracious save in the world, obviously, but Buffy only had so much self to sacrifice.

When Robin had recovered himself he was sitting on the floor, and Buffy was looking down at him, just how she wanted. “Are you done?” she asked, hands on her hips.

“Oh god,” Robin groaned, unable to meet her eyes. He struggled to his feet, wiping dirt from his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Buffy. I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah, you did,” Buffy replied, rejecting that particular white lie. That was the moment Robin found the strength to look at her – and she met his eyes, which were back to their normal soft brown. Unashamed, she shrugged. “It’s no big,” she forgave him. “You’re not the only one thinking it.”

This particular response, it seemed to send Robin speechless. He looked at her for a long time and Buffy waited, amused to watch him resist the urge to accuse her of everything he just had a minute ago. “Well,” he said finally, dropping his gaze back past Buffy to the glowing seal, “we’re gonna have to have to get this thing closed down. Do you think the witches will know how, or…?”

Buffy turned around. It was palpable, the evil that emanated from these carved designs. Not quite darkness, because it was still bright with its thick, eerie light, but it was so clearly a link between this world and the Hell that lay beyond.

How it had come to be there, Buffy didn’t know. Before, the Hellmouth had always been a crack in the ground, or somewhere she figured had to lie just beyond the last bend and turn in the sewers. It was possible that the seal had always been here, but no one had ever found it. The old school presumably had had foundations, and she remembered that they had been concrete; the new build and everything that had been done to clear the site must have allowed the Bringers to find a way through.

Buffy remembered, thinking back. What was it Anya had said, back when Buffy had been talking to Spike about the trigger…?

“It was Andrew who dug this up, you know,” Buffy told Principal Wood as she remembered. Still looking at the seal, she glanced over her shoulder as her boss came to stand next to her.

“Andrew who’s in your house?” Robin asked, sounding surprised.

“Yeah,” Buffy confirmed, kicking some dirt towards the glow. “Him and this guy from my class in high school. A good guy,” she conceded. “One you would have thought might survive this.”

It didn’t seem to affect the seal, when the dirt fell into it. Buffy didn’t expect it to. The Hellmouth tainted the entire town of Sunnydale – through the sewers, up its roads and into the bricks of its houses. Evil and darkness was threaded through the veins of the earth, every sod of all twelve cemeteries. She was the Slayer; she felt these things. Mostly.

“What happened to him?” Robin asked about Jonathan, almost cautiously. It was as though he thought it had to be a tragic story.

Buffy just snorted, thinking about the things that love could make you do. “Andrew killed him,” she explained. “Dumped his body here to bleed out.”

Robin didn’t say anything, but his clothes crunched as he shifted – uncomfortably.

“He wasn’t possessed or anything,” Buffy continued, thinking it might be reassuring. From Robin’s face, it didn’t seem as though he’d taken it that way. “There was this guy, Warren, who both of them had been friends with. He…” She remembered, “He was a piece of work, but he died last year. The First used his face to persuade Andrew to do what he did.”

“And you…?” Robin was taken aback by this story, clearly. The uneven light drew shadows on his face.

“That’s why we took him hostage,” Buffy confirmed. “To keep an eye on him.”

Someone was keeping an eye on him, anyway. She tried not to.

“But you’ve forgiven him,” Robin kept on, as though this had been his real question. “You treat him like he’s one of your own, even after what he’s done.”

Buffy frowned, staring at the seal’s glow and wondering whether somewhere, someday, someone would get this point. “He’s not evil,” she said. “He was weak, and he was stupid, but to take down the First that’s –”

“You’re gonna beat this thing, Buffy,” Robin interrupted, as though she had been doubting herself. “I have faith in you.”

He could have had faith in all of them, Buffy thought: her and Spike and the gang and the girls, and Andrew right along with them. He didn’t, though, just like none of them did. Buffy could recognise that, from the hero worship that filled his face.

She looked back to the seal. “We’re not gonna close it down,” she decided, accepting it. “You felt it,” she told Robin, still not looking at him. “This is a direct link to the First’s power.” She was ready now, to take the step in front of her, to cross the line. “This is its weakness.” She knew it.

“But, Buffy…” Robin began uncertainly.

“We leave it,” Buffy insisted. It was nearly time.

\-- _back then_ \--

After all of it – after getting bit and the arguing with Xander and Dawn and even Spike himself, after bothering Althanea and explaining things to Ms. Chalmers – Buffy realised she didn’t want want to watch as Spike and Lydia did their thing. Even though Althanea was supervising, it didn’t sit right. Magic was sexy; they made songs about it – and even if Buffy was being irrational she didn’t want to be there to find it all out again.

They didn’t do it while Buffy was at work, for reasons no one understood. Instead they did it in the afternoon, which left Buffy to third-wheel Willow and Kennedy for a while. Willow was trying to teach her a floating spell, or at least convince her girlfriend that she could do a floating spell if she wanted. Buffy pretended to read, even as it made her head pound.

Later, the living room was taken over by Andrew and, weirdly, Xander, on one of their bizarre schemes of entertainment. They’d found a games console from somewhere and spent at least an hour hooking up the TV to host a gaming tournament, which apparently was on the Nigel-approved list of competitive activities. It drew a big crowd after dinner, but at no point was it ever explained why Xander and Andrew got to make themselves team captains.

By the time it all got going, Buffy decided she’d had enough crowds for one day. Really, she was still a little weak, so sitting ultimately was the best activity for her. After contemplating the leftover pasta, she found herself leaving the kitchen for the back porch with another glass of juice. She was ready to embrace the quiet.

Of course, the porch wasn’t free. Instead of the vampire who should have been there, though, there was Lydia Chalmers, woman of the hour. She was sitting on the steps, incongruously smoking a cigarette.

For a moment, Buffy was struck by the thought that maybe something had gone very Sunnydale, leading Spike and Lydia to swap bodies. Her head was immediately filled with awkward scenes of Spike mincing around the research books while Lydia’s lurked in the background, watching with that hungry, fearful longing in her eyes.

They were disturbing images, all of them. Thankfully, though it was also a tad disturbing, Buffy realised she knew Spike’s smoking habits well enough that she could be sure this wasn’t him. Lydia was holding the cigarette wrong and puffing in an all too dainty way for her to be possessed by a punk. On top of that, there was an ashtray sitting at her side, in the form of a teacup-saucer. There was only one other butt crushed into it.

It seemed the Watcher was just – what? Taking a load off?

“Isn’t that bad for you?” Buffy asked as an opening, refusing to feel jealous. That had been a thing earlier; she was over it now.

Completely devoid of supersenses, it seemed, Lydia even jumped. _See,_ Buffy thought. There wasn’t so much to feel jealous about.

After jumping, Lydia turned slightly on the step, meeting Buffy’s eyes with guilt in her own – but she didn’t let go of her cigarette. She coughed, then spoke. “You’re right,” she said, glancing back to the garden. “But…” She seemed to search for the right words: she found them. “It’s been a long time. I think my lungs will forgive me.”

“Right.” In the grand scheme of things, Buffy was trying for cool – she really was. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like cool was coming to her. Unable to resist the questions pressuring her from inside her head, Buffy swung forward slightly towards the porch. Her hand didn’t move from the door jamb. “So, uh, did it go OK?” she asked. “You know, downstairs?”

Smoke flowed out of Lydia’s nose in a stream. “I believe Spike will be out for a little while longer,” was what she said, frowning as she looked back to the garden.

It didn’t really answer Buffy’s question, but it at least told her something that she wanted to know. Accepting the point, she turned and shut the kitchen door behind her, coming out a little further onto the quiet porch. “But is he…” What was her question, really? Fixed? Safe? Alive? “… better?”

There was a glass of juice in Buffy’s hands, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted to drink it, at least maybe not with Lydia for company. She took a sip anyway, just for something to do. It took a few seconds, after all, and one more puff before the Watcher replied.

“I believe the exercise has been successful,” was what the woman said, although she didn’t sound that happy about it. She glanced Buffy’s way again, tapping some ash onto the saucer by her side.

In the end, Buffy took the peace offering for what it was. It didn’t seem there was all that much news that would be coming, at least before Spike woke up, so there was still no way to fill her evening until then. Carefully, she made the rest of the way over the decking and eased herself down on the step, not so far from Lydia’s side. The noise from the living room was a gentle murmur, far away and quieter than the crickets, who were happy with the fading light.

“When do you think he might wake up?” Buffy asked, her hand on the grooves of the wood. She took in Lydia’s drawn appearance, wondering if the whole affair had really been that sexy after all. Maybe there were some mysteries about Spike that she wasn’t supposed to know.

When Lydia looked back at her, it certainly seemed as though a great time was not had by at least one part of the group.

“What happened in there?” Buffy asked, taking another surreptitious sip of juice.

Lydia shook her head, pulling again on her cigarette. “Memories,” she offered, as though it was a vast understatement. Her gaze returned on the shadowed garden. “Reminisces.”

“Enough for your next book, I guess?” Buffy asked, because it was easy to.

Her frown deepened, but Lydia didn’t say anything in response to that. It was as though she was hurt, maybe, by Buffy’s assumption. Otherwise, she was suspicious of the way Buffy was talking to her at all.

At the end of the day, which this was, Buffy didn’t really get what it was she had done to this Watcher. There was a whole list of things in the other direction, but Buffy didn’t get how she could have started this. “OK, look,” she asked, “why exactly is it that you hate me?” She set her juice on the step beside her, to mark how serious she was. “I get you think I’m too rough on the Potentials, but I figure there must be people in the Council who are worse. And, OK,” she offered an alternative, “Spike’s your pet project, but…”

“There is no one in the Council like you,” Lydia interrupted her, crossing her ankles as she leaned back – away from Buffy. “No. There’s no one in the _Council_ ,” she corrected, bluntly. “They’re all dead.”

“What?” Buffy replied. “And you blame me for that?”

It made sense, maybe. Mostly it made the sense that wasn’t, but Buffy knew enough about grief to realise that the blame didn’t always end up falling on the right people. When she looked at Lydia, she could see a woman who was grieving, in shock for the loss of her workplace if not in actual despair about the colleagues she had lost. It seemed like she and Nigel got on well, even her and Travers, so presumably there were others that she’d spent time with. Being here in Sunnydale, with yet more risk of absolute destruction, it had to be hard. But didn’t Buffy know that too?

“Before Althanea rescued us,” Lydia began, looking down towards the lawn ahead of them, “we were convinced that we would die in the rubble. Sir… Quentin was unconscious,” she continued. “Nigel and I were both awake in the crawlspace, eventually, but…” She shut her eyes, swallowing once before she spoke again – with difficulty, “Higgins had been closer to the bookcase when it fell. All of us had been battered by the books, but he’d been caught between the floor and that – mahogany. It took him an hour to die.”

With a shaking hand, the woman took another puff of smoke. She blinked her eyes open, which to Buffy at least seemed clear, and wiped ash from what had become a very familiar set of track pants.

“All the time we were travelling,” Lydia added when she’d composed herself, “I was convinced that we would defeat the being who had done this. The fight against evil would be our revenge, and we would triumph.” She glanced at Buffy with cold, analytical assessment in her eyes. “And yet when we arrived,” she said, as though it meant something, “we found you, the Slayer, almost broken by the progress of the battle. In that… Pit.”

Buffy frowned, as usual not entirely certain what these people wanted from her. “I’m sorry?” she suggested, feeling the ridges of the decking through her clothes.

As though she was saying the wrong thing entirely, Lydia just waved her rapidly vanishing cigarette at her. She coughed again, then said, finding the words, “No. Don’t apologise.” She shook her head, her eyes serious behind her glasses before she was looking at the floor again. “My point is that this sojourn into Spike’s head gave me a perspective I had rather lacked before.”

 _Which is?_ Buffy wanted to press, but she waited instead – picking up her juice instead for another sip. She still had that slight pressure of dehydration inside her temples, from the bloodloss. It wouldn’t have been a great evening to have had her head filled with revelations, that was fair to say.

Eventually, Lydia got round to what she wanted to express, but it took a couple more puffs. “He thinks rather highly of you,” she commented finally, stating the obvious. “I’m sure you’re aware.”

The scrutiny was back in the Watcher’s expression, which made Buffy shift uncomfortably. “Yeah,” she said carefully. “I… I figured that out.” Presumably this trip down memory lane had left out the various obscene declarations of love. It seemed weird to Buffy; they were Spike’s speciality.

At least, Lydia seemed fairly relaxed about it all. “You are, I fear… I don’t know,” she added. “His idol. The face of his salvation.”

Unable to help it, Buffy laughed, a loud snort of it snapping out of her.

“What?” Lydia asked shortly. She sounded annoyed.

“Oh, nothing,” Buffy replied, though the smile didn’t quite leave her face. “I guess you have been inside his head after all…” Looking out into the garden – the thicket at the end of the lawn – Buffy cast her mind back. She remembered that phrase: it was a Spike phrase, something he’d said one time, but she didn’t remember it being about her. “He said that once,” she explained out loud, buying herself time. “About… About…” She remembered. “About Drusilla.”

“Ah,” Lydia replied – before she also laughed. “Well, I suppose it’s not surprising that a few things stuck.” She looked amused by this prospect, finishing her smoke as though one day she might too become the Big Bad.

Buffy wasn’t convinced, but she said nothing.

It wasn’t that funny, actually, the idea of Spike looking up to her. She didn’t want him to. It was fine, maybe, back when he’d seen that part as a reason to try and pull her down – it had screwed both of them over, but they’d both come out the end of it. Now there was the whole problem where Spike saw himself in the dirt and decided it was best for him to stay there. As far as Buffy was concerned, there wasn’t all that much she could do up in the stars on her own.

As she stabbed the end of her cigarette out on the saucer, Lydia continued as though it was her place to offer commentary on Buffy’s personality. “You are rather similar to her, you know?” she said, stubbing the last light from the but. “Drusilla.”

Of anything Lydia could have said, that wasn’t what Buffy had been expecting. “I’m – what?” she asked not sure whether to be offended or amused. OK, so everyone knew that while one boyfriend in common might be bad luck, two nearly always looked like a pattern, but…

 _Hang on a second_ , Buffy remembered. There was the birthday thing, wasn’t there? Oh god, she thought, rubbing her hairline to make sure it wasn’t curling. As long as she wasn’t similar to Darla, schoolgirl miniskirt or no schoolgirl miniskirt – she was wearing slacks today, at least, and Drusilla didn’t go for those either…

Lydia was smirking, as though she was serious about this plan to make things stick from Spike’s head. It only lasted a moment, however, before Buffy’s glare set her expression back into its usual skittering uncertainty.

All the same, the Watcher’s voice was strong when she spoke. “By all reports she was a sweet girl before she was turned,” she said, as though it was her job to defend the mad freak. “Her parents were Irish immigrants who fled the famine just after Drusilla was born, with her sisters. Her father was a mining overseer, who found work on the first London Underground tunnels.”

Then Lydia shrugged, presumably realising that none of this was exactly news. Buffy kept an eye on her, waiting for the point.

“Her calling was to help others,” Lydia then continued, glancing Buffy’s way. “But unlike you she never came to understand it. At first sight she was an obsession for Angelus, a match for all of his dreams and designs. Then later,” she finished as Buffy’s frown set deeply between her eyes, “at the height of her powers, she gave purpose to a man named William, who had had everything he’d ever dreamed of – everything he thought to define him – torn away.”

“But that’s nothing about me,” Buffy immediately complained, the moment she had a chance. Lydia picked up a packet of cigarettes from the other side of her leg and shook them slightly, turning them over in her hand. “That’s just Spike and Angel repeating their stupid patterns and – hey!” she interrupted herself, as she recognised the packet Lydia was contemplating, why the smell out here had been so uncanny. “You stole those from Spike!”

For all of a split-second, Lydia looked guilty as hell – then she shook her head and glared at Buffy as though she was the one responsible. “He’s unconscious,” she said, reaching down to pull up the other thing she had on her side of the decking. _And that's not suspicious at all._ “I stole his lighter too,” she said, taunting Buffy with the familiar silver Zippo. “I’ll get him some more when I’m next at the shop,” she dismissed finally, flicking the lid of the packet open as though this solidified her decision.

Buffy was speechless as Lydia lit up again. This was - completely unreasonable. It was theft! And…

The thing was, she came from California: smoking was generally considered evil enough that she didn’t have to worry about the chain part. Nor the stealing. “Am I supposed to cut you off at some point?” Buffy found herself asking, as if Lydia was going to answer. She couldn’t fuss over Spike's cigarettes, of course. It was all too familiar and he could fight his own battles anyway. “I mean,” she tried a more sensible comment, pulling herself together. “You’re gonna live through this, you know. And you’re gonna need all your tubes when you’re eighty.” She’d seen all those throat cancer photos. They were pretty nasty.

The look in this Watcher’s eyes was pure sarcasm. She was still sunburned from the other day, but the patches on her cheeks and her neck and her arms – they had a definite ruddy-tan thing going for them now, filling her with freckles. They made Lydia’s mousy hair look blonde. “You can’t help it, can you?” she said, like it was an accusation. Sucking in and then blowing out a fresh mouthful of smoke, she returned the lighter to the decking and kept on, “Fitting into that position, being everything anyone could ever…”

She sighed, looking down before she tapped a minute sprinkle of ash onto the saucer with the rest.

“My point is precisely that I hoped for too much from you,” Lydia said finally, as though she hated herself for it. “I wanted so dearly for you to save us all.” She laughed, puffing air down her nose with a hack. “I still do.”

Buffy wasn’t sure what to say to that. Really, she wanted nothing more to leave Lydia to it, but there was nothing much for her to do inside right now. Besides, the smell of Spike’s cigarettes was almost comforting.

* * *

A little later, Buffy went back inside. Lydia vanished, and as the night truly fell a slight chill rode in on the breeze.

Naturally, she found herself in the basement, watching Spike while he slept off the last of the spell. To start with Buffy simply moved from one step to another, from the porch to the top of the basement stairs. She even kept the light from the kitchen behind her, so the image of Spike was dim and shadowy and far away. It wasn’t always constant, the light, as people stomped in and out of the kitchen, casting shadows over the gap in the door she had ajar. They pulled what seemed like an endless supply of snacks from the refrigerator, slodging the door open and closed and before they beeped the microwave buttons. They laughed and talked and bitched about people, not excluding her and Spike.

The hubbub from the living room was a steady hum behind it all, and eventually Buffy tuned it all out into background noise. Her eyes adjusted too. As the minutes passed she could make out not only Spike’s arms and head, but his nose and ears and his face as he slept. She could see the hard set of his mouth and the tension in his fingers.

Increasingly, he became restless, turning on his side, then back, then back again. His nose twitched like he’d just inhaled some dust.

Someone in the kitchen laughed uproariously, the giggles high and squeaky on sugar. Buffy figured it was time to give them both some privacy. She shut the door behind her and flicked on the light. The noise of everybody else dimmed into insignificance.

It took a while, but the basement’s two fluorescent strip lights slowly heated up as Buffy came down the stairs. They flickered once, twice and then again before finally they were stable and Buffy was sitting on the edge of Spike’s bed, watching him rouse into wakefulness.

“Hey,” she said, as his eyes eased themselves open. He blinked the way she was blinking. “How’re you feeling?”

In a heartbeat, the strain and tension around Spike’s eyes relaxed into immortal youth. Buffy wasn’t fooled, of course: she reached out to touch him on the cheek, to make sure he knew that she knew.

For a moment, Spike smiled, before he was pulling away to sit up, back against the wall where they usually sat. “Think the trigger’s gone,” he said abruptly, like she was there to talk about business. “Got it all sorted now in the noggin,” he added, like that was an explanation, tapping two fingers at his hairline.

With a bit more grace and elegance, Buffy sat back into the space his legs had just swept from. “Good,” she said seriously, trying to take his hand. “I’m glad.”

It was less obvious this time, but Spike still squirmed away from her, pulling both of his hands into his lap. It was an obvious game, a little like before and a little like he’d seen himself and decided he wasn’t so nice, not to her and not with his needs.

Buffy sighed. Did he think she didn’t realise how imperfect they all were? “You know,” she said, much less gently. Spike looked at her. “Neither of us really has the time to do a whole two-steps-forwards-one-step-backwards thing.”

The vampire still looked confused, so Buffy got on with making her intentions clear. She put her hand halfway up Spike’s thigh and squeezed, curving her fingers around to trace his jeans’ inseam. It was seamy, she decided, but not in a bad way. More like a plain and unambiguous signal of I-am-hitting-on-you-so-give-it-up-with-the-coy.

As she traced her fingers around in a circle, Buffy glanced up, to check the signal had been received.

Thankfully, for all his other flaws, Spike was nothing if not a massive slut, so his cocked knee relaxed happily towards her hand. The look in his eyes, though, Buffy was disappointed to see, that was all ingénue. “Watcher bee had a point, you know,” he said, swallowing as Buffy crept a little higher. It made his leg all kinds of twitchy. “There’s this thing I do with you, project my feelings – see what I want to see.”

“You do, huh?” Buffy asked, figuring she could have made that point herself. A year ago. She turned towards him, taking the dare. “And what is it you’re seeing right now?”

Immediately Spike dropped his head, pulling back and looking pale against the dark brown bricks. Buffy waited, because she at least had time for this, and when Spike looked up again she wasn’t surprised to see his eyes fall straight to the wound on her neck. It had closed during the day, but the bruising was still pretty deep. Buffy mostly hated wearing dressings, though, because they made her look vulnerable, so she hadn’t covered it up.

Fitfully, Spike looked between the wound and her eyes, then down to her hand then back again. “All I’ve ever wanted,” he admitted, “is your forgiveness.”

He winced as he said it, and looked away like Buffy was going to shoot him down. It kept him from noticing, she hoped, what was a breath of relief that staggered out of her mouth. This part of her feelings, at least, she was willing to get into with him. “Hey,” she said.

Her slutty hand moved of its own accord, going to clasp Spike’s face. Really, Buffy was annoyed with herself. She’d been worked up all day when she should have realised how she was needed – and why it was she’d really wanted to be here.

Spike looked how Buffy knew he felt. Devastated – like usual. “You’ve got it, right?” she told him. “I forgive you.”

They were looking directly at each other. Buffy had her feet curled under her on the mattress and Spike’s hand was brushing against her knee. He made a move, riding the crease between her legs with his thumb as his palm slid slowly up her thigh. At the same time, Buffy leaned up towards him, bringing her other hand to his face as her gaze dropped a few inches. It was all, in the end, kind of easy.

“Buffy…”

_Click-clunk._

Obviously, that was the moment someone decided to open the basement door.

Unhurriedly, Buffy paused and rolled her eyes. Spike grumbled in frustration, sniffed, but they shared a smile as she pulled back. _Rain check,_ she mouthed at him.

When she was back against the wall again, Buffy crossed her arms. Spike’s thigh next to hers was all muscles and twitches, so she was pretty much ready to give whoever was coming downstairs a serious piece of her mind.

Then, even more obviously, it was who it was.

“Giles!” Buffy exclaimed, nearly jumping out of her vampire-romancing skin. “What are you doing here?” she asked, because her name was actually subtlety. _Subtuffy_ “I thought you were halfway around the world or whatever…”

Thankfully, Giles was caught up in whatever old-guy British conniption which had brought him downstairs in the first place, and seemed oblivious to Buffy’s lack of cool. “Buffy,” he demanded, taking the last few steps down to the floor. “Would you care to explain why the last of the world’s potential Slayers, the final hope we have against evil, are all upstairs playing _video games_?”

Buffy looked at Spike. Spike looked at Buffy. The noise upstairs was pretty loud after all.

“Uh…” Buffy began, while her heart sank.

.


	12. bodies II

\-- _back then_ \--

Giles wasn’t going to move from the basement, it seemed. He looked down at where she and Spike were sitting on the bed and all Buffy could do was look back at him. Also not back at him, so much as the stairs.

“Umm…” Buffy said, still trying to buy herself some time. What had he wanted to know? Why the video games? Why Andrew was saying he was an elf again? Surely Giles didn’t expect her to have an explanation for _Andrew?_ “It’s, uh, game night?” she tried eventually, because at least that was the truth.

“Game ni…” A hard frown crossed his face and Giles shook his head, as though he couldn’t even bring himself to finish that thought.

Buffy panicked, just a little. Was it really so bad an idea? It hadn’t seemed so when the guys had been setting it up, and at least when the girls were occupied they didn’t eat quite so much food. It wasn’t like they could train _all_ the time. “We thought it would be a good idea, you know?” she said out loud, not sure if it was better if she assumed or abdicated responsibility for the whole idea. “For morale.”

“Morale,” Giles repeated, in that tone of voice he had. He looked at Buffy again.

“Yeah,” she replied, trying to shrink herself very small.

With a flicker of recognition in his eyes, Giles then glanced at Spike. It was as though he’d noticed a vampire was sitting there with them for the first time, and when he looked back to Buffy there were conclusions written all over him. “Oh,” he said, as if it all now made sense. He took his glasses off. “I see.”

“See what?” Buffy replied, feeling it where Spike’s thigh brushed against hers. It was tingly, which usually was nice, but right now it wasn’t working for her quite so well. Xander and Willow she could cope with; with Dawnie she could figure something out. With Giles, though – when she looked at Spike and he looked as busted as she felt – Buffy didn’t know what to say. “What do you see?” she asked again, almost dreading the answer.

“Well,” Giles began, in exactly the same tone. He put the glasses back on his face. “I see that, as usual, you’ve decided to – hear my advice, and then do the precise opposite.”

“What?” Buffy shot back, not much voice coming into the breath that left her mouth. Giles couldn’t think it was all that simple. It just plain wasn’t.

“Need I remind you,” he continued anyway, like Buffy really hadn’t spoken, “who exactly the First has been targeting? Which creature in this house has been its primary agent of destruction these past months?” He was bristling with anger now. “And need I suggest –”

Buffy interrupted this final point. “The _trigger_ ,” she emphasised, “is not active anymore, OK?” Spike shifted, like he was agreeing.

But it wasn’t relevant. “– the lessons of the past need to be _learnt_ ,” Giles finished, as though he felt sorry for her.

 _“No,”_ Buffy told her Watcher, finally feeling annoyed. Screw the past; she wasn’t gonna take it. Leaning forward, she rested her hand on Spike’s knee – for balance, mostly. He touched the back of her elbow, as if to hold her back, but then seemed to think better of it and let her go. “ _You_ are the one,” she told Giles, pointing at him and his pitying eyes. “You are the one who’s _stuck_ , thinking things can’t change.” They’d ghosted around this on the phone a few times, but this was now, in the flesh. Buffy pointed at herself, trying to feel it. “I know they can.”

For a moment, Giles said nothing. He looked at her until his expression hardened, and then he was talking again. “I suppose this is how it is. Do you even train the girls anymore?” he asked, sounding like Buffy was a lost cause. “Or do you spend all of your time down – here?” He looked around the basement in disgust, turning up his nose at Spike’s things before he cast an eye to the bed and its blue sheets.

There was actually only so much of this Buffy would put up with. “You do realise this is my actual basement, right?” she replied, not moving from Spike’s side, even as her legs began to itch.

Spike himself was keeping silent, watching Giles warily.

“It’s not some den of iniquity,” Buffy added, looking back to her Watcher. She tried to mollify him. “If anything attacks us, I’m right here.”

“Yes,” Giles replied, as though that was the problem. He pulled his glasses off – started cleaning them. “And I’m certain it’s convenient,” he suggested, as though this thought had come out of nowhere. “To have – someone – so close to home.”

Buffy glanced at Spike, wondering if he would see it that way, like Giles so clearly wanted him to. She’d tried it before.

This time around, Spike just glanced back at her and promptly rolled his eyes. Like she was an idiot. “Do I get a say in all this?” he spoke up then, for the first time, addressing Giles.

Like they were still roommates, but with a heck of a lot more bad blood between them, Giles immediately shot back a childish, sarcastic smile. “No,” he said bluntly.

Buffy wasn’t sure what the heck she was supposed to do in this situation. When she looked at Spike, he was wearing his own expression of irritation. “Should I leave you to it?” he asked after a sigh. Buffy shrugged and he glanced upwards. “I think I hear Mario Kart calling my name,” he added, with the suggestion that it would probably be easier if he left. The hubbub was a-bubbing.

“OK,” Buffy agreed, because she figured she had to say something. Also because he was probably right.

All of his face was hard, but Spike nonetheless took Buffy’s hand and squeezed it for a moment as he kicked himself off the bed. She smiled, or at least tensed the muscles in her chin, and her serious vampire boyfriend nodded back at her. Then he was storming out of the basement. As he passed Giles he cut in close, on purpose so her Watcher got a surprise bump on his shoulder. Then without comment he was heading up the stairs.

Buffy watched him go.

“That’s where you should be,” Giles said when Spike was just about gone. Buffy looked at him again, not quite getting the point. “Upstairs,” he pressed. “With those girls. You are their mentor,” he reminded her.

Pressing her fingers into the hollows underneath her eyes, Buffy tried to figure out what she was going to say. With Spike gone, sitting on the bed felt a hell of a lot less decadent and a heck of a lot more like a thin camping mattress with one broken spring not so far from her ass. It sank under her weight, and not in a good way. She had to curl her feet under the frame it was so low.

The thing was, she’d been upstairs all afternoon, and mostly it hadn’t been enjoyable. “You know why I’m with Spike, Giles?” Buffy came out with eventually, looking up.

There was already a quirk of disbelief in Giles’ eyes. With the cellar light, he looked like he’d come to find a bottle of wine and ended up with a rack full of schnapps. Still, he didn’t say anything.

Buffy tried to explain, “It’s because he’s the only one who doesn’t call on me to do things I can’t do.” Rubbing her hands on her knees, she wondered if these were the words and this was the time. The washer needed running again. “To be this perfect Slayer, you know?” she suggested anyway. “To be the girl who doesn’t… _Find_ a relationship. Who doesn’t take her eye off of the apocalypse for one single second.”

Now Giles was looking at her with pity. It didn’t seem so good a result.

All the same, Buffy finished her point. Pointedly. “He doesn’t ask me to be this perfect ‘mentor’ to a bunch of girls who hate me.” And he didn’t ask her to save everyone.

“Buffy…” Giles said when she was done, like all hope was lost. “You are being melodramatic.” He looked around the basement and didn’t seem to notice the washer, just the gloom. “This is no star-crossed romance,” he added, as though Buffy might have been confused. “This is a fling. With Spike.”

They were at a stalemate, clearly. With yet another sigh, Buffy pushed herself backwards to a slightly more comfortable position on the bed and figured it was time for sheer negotiation. “What do you want me to say?” she asked Giles, trying to level with him.

When it came down to it, after all, there were certain things that were clear in Buffy’s mind. The basement was comfy. She had no plans to leave the basement this evening, except to get Spike back down there with her. He was clearly still tired and vulnerable-feeling after his detriggering with Lydia, which had to be why he’d left so soon rather than revelling in the discord. So, obviously, he was due some Buffy TLC and she was due some of those warm, sharp, wriggly feelings she got in her gut when they made out. Without them she was just an exhausted old Slayer, waiting for the end to come.

There were lots of things she would do to get that, Buffy decided, but first she had to figure out what it was that Giles really expected from her. “When Xander…” Buffy suggested, keeping her eyes on her Watcher’s expression. “I told Xander how it was. We didn’t plan any of this,” she explained, reasonably. “I’m not trying to hurt anybody.”

Giles, of course, was unrelenting, even in his kindness. “Buffy,” he said gently, like he was also bone-tired. Also as though he hadn’t realised yet that this was a negotiation. “I’ve just come from the Council’s base in Johannesburg,” he explained. “The place is – levelled. Obliterated. The issues here are too…” He finished even more gently, closing his eyes for a moment, for strength Buffy thought. Then he changed the subject, shaking his head before he revealed, “Dawn told me that he bit you.”

Without thinking, Buffy slapped her hand to her neck. It felt like so long ago, but it wasn’t; it was a day. The wound was still pretty fresh, for her, and though her hand covered it up the slap hurt when it smacked against her bruises.

God, for some reason she still felt guilty. About this – about the Watchers. Looking down at her lap, Buffy couldn’t work out why. _Johannesburg._ “He was triggered,” she said carefully, when she found her strength. Her hand slipped to her shoulder as she raised her head. “It wasn’t his fault,” she insisted, “and he’s better now. Lydia went inside his head and fixed him.”

As she glanced again at the unwashed laundry, Buffy seriously wished she could stop feeling shame about what was otherwise no different from any other wound she’d got from patrolling. It was worse than with Dracula, this feeling – like everyone was thinking this was something she’d wanted, rather than an accident; like this was a visible mark of all the kinky sex games and Spike weren’t even playing, the sort of sign everyone could see, unlike all of the bruises and bites and contusions she’d been covering up the last time.

Of course, for once it didn’t seem as though Giles was thinking along those lines at all. “Lydia?” was what he picked up on. He had his nose screwed up as though this was the most surprising part of all Buffy’s news. Also like he was affronted. “And what experience does she have with this?”

At least he was distracted, Buffy thought. She bit her lip, trying to remember. “Well, she knows his history,” she tried. “And she has more training in hokey vampire psychology than half the people in this house…”

“That may be true,” Giles scoffed, as though this was commentary he’d known for so long he didn’t have to think before it flowed from his tongue. “But Miss _Chalmers_ is hardly one to think about the big picture.”

Buffy frowned. “What do you mean by that?” she asked him, looking for the guy who’d always had faith in her, no matter how small or blonde or screechy or weepy she’d been. He didn’t seem all that present. “She’s a Watcher, isn’t she?” Really, Buffy felt almost bad for her, now Lydia had been driven to the nicotine. After everything in London… “She’s just like you,” Buffy finished, trying to remind Giles what he’d always claimed to be.

For a moment the man looked speechless, before he told her, “There are Watchers and there are Watchers,” like this was still important, even after everything. “I would no longer let Lydia Chalmers inside a vampire’s head than I would let Nigel Ramachandran. They’re mandarins, Buffy,” he insisted, though Buffy herself had no idea what miniature oranges had to do with anything.

_Are you saying that they’re fruit-flavoured?_

“They protect and serve the needs of the Council,” Giles answered the question she hadn’t asked. “All they _know_ are the archives.”

“But…” Buffy interrupted, ignoring this whole citrus distraction. “There’s no archives left, last I heard. Don’t you think that…”

“They’ve never been in the field,” Giles finished, as if this really, really was the important point. “They don’t know what it’s like.”

There was something haunted about Giles, right about then. Buffy scrutinised him, wondering what it was he did, all the time he spent away from Sunnydale. OK, he was tracking down the girls, and from the way she found Althanea outside sometimes at sunrise, doing witchy stuff, Buffy figured his old friend was still helping him. They spoke on the phone when Buffy was done. At the same time, it seemed like there was something else. Possibly he was trying to track down Watchers. Possibly he’d joined the poker circuit. Possibly he had an ex-murdering vampire girlfriend that Buffy would never even know about to call an intervention because it wasn’t _his_ house they all lived in.

“I think they’re doing OK, actually,” Buffy said eventually, pulling herself back to the point. After all her years as the Slayer, she could be serious, and so she was being serious now. She put her hands on her hips. “Lydia _and_ Nigel.” Did he really think she’d have let them do stuff if she didn’t think they were doing OK? She was selfish, but she wasn’t _that_ selfish. “They’re here during the day when I can’t be,” she explained, looking Giles in the eyes. “The girls like them; they trust the both of them. You have so much else going on,” she accused, because it seemed like a relevant point. “And, you know what?” she finished. “So do I.”

That was all that needed to be said, as far as Buffy was concerned. It was clear Giles didn’t want to talk about what was going on with him any more than Buffy wanted to talk about what was going on between her and Spike. He said nothing, just looked at her, and Buffy stared her Watcher down.

Now came the negotiation.

“You should be showing those girls,” was what Giles said, finally, pointing to the ceiling. “You should be showing them what it means to be the Slayer.”

“Fine,” Buffy agreed. Since she was the only one alive and not incarcerated, she assumed that wouldn’t be so tough. She didn’t move from the bed. “Tonight they’re learning how to have fun and forget for a little while about their certain, impending death. Hence I’m playing hooky right along with them.”

For a moment, Giles was cowed. He looked down, apparently remembering what he’d forgotten, that there was only one thing certain when you were the Slayer, and it wasn’t something fun.

“All right,” he agreed, even if his expression was hard again when he looked back up. “And you will train them,” he added. Buffy couldn’t quite figure out if he thought it was best for her, for the girls, or if he simply didn’t trust Lydia and Nigel to do their jobs.

“From tomorrow,” Buffy confirmed, because it seemed like she wasn’t going to get out of it. She didn’t fight battles she wasn’t going to win.

Giles nodded and with one more glance to the bedsheets he turned to walk away. It was as though this was the only thing they needed to discuss after he’d been absent a week and a half.

“Leave Spike alone,” Buffy demanded from the back of him. She wasn’t going to ask.

One foot on the stairs and one hand on the bannister, Giles paused. He looked back at her, and Buffy knew he got what she wasn’t saying.

_You’re gonna need him._

* * *

After the minutes it took to gather herself, Buffy followed Giles upstairs. She found Spike right there in the kitchen, of all places, talking to Xander – of all people. The sound of game night was still zipping and zooming from the living room and the smell of warm popcorn was rich and buttery where it wafted from the overflowing bowl on the countertop.

Spike was pulling a bag of warm blood from the microwave. Xander was eating the popcorn. “What?” he asked, crunching the last kernel in his hand from between his fingers, “And you’re saying Giles busted straight in? Without even _knocking?_ ”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, mate,” Spike snarked back, shoving closed the microwave door. “He didn’t see anything you’ve seen.”

Then he was ripping the bag open with his teeth, catching Buffy’s eye and winking. She blushed, trying to figure out how the microwave had made the kitchen quite so hot…

Thankfully, Xander seemed to have missed this reference, as well as the wink. Either that or he was politely ignoring it. Bullishly, he carried on. “That’s not he point!”, he exclaimed, clearly far away as he plunged his hand back into the popcorn bowl. “This house is full of people and there’s not even a lock on the bathroom.” He pulled his fresh handful free, gesturing with it. “People need privacy! To have…” Finally he caught sight of Buffy, who raised her eyebrow, wondering what exactly Xander had been doing in her house. “To have conversations,” he finished a little more feebly, bringing his hand to his mouth and smothering anything else he might have said with munching.

There was pity on Spike’s face. “Can’t you take it back to your apartment?” he asked, like he was thinking exactly what Buffy was thinking. God, she hoped Xander and Anya had cleaned up after themselves. After that time at the Magic Box…

Xander looked between them. Muttering something about ‘pressure’, he abruptly took the snack bowl up into his arms and escaped.

Buffy watched him go, wondering if this was what the apocalypse reduced them to. It was all kind of sad.

“It must be hard, I guess,” she suggested, looking back. Sucking on his blood, Spike raised his eyebrows – the picture of vampiric innocence. Buffy suppressed a giggle, glancing down. “I _mean_ ,” she emphasised, trying to remember that they were talking about Xander. “It must be hard to take Anya back to his apartment. You know,” she explained, because she was sensitive, “after they spent so much time there together.”

Spike shrugged, licking his lips. “Life’s hard,” he said, pitching away from the counter.

Buffy raised her own eyebrows. It was an impressive pitch. When she caught Spike’s eyes again, he was looking at her with hot, narrowed eyes and a smirk on his face. “And what exactly are you thinking about?”

Letting the joke go, Buffy sighed. She leaned back on the basement door. “Giles wants me to try training the girls again,” she informed him more seriously, crossing her arms. “It’s part of some – deal – which means he might actually get off my case.”

“What’s the deal?” Spike asked, catching the mood and accepting it as he went back to his dinner.

Buffy wasn’t sure what to tell him. She shrugged. “I train the girls,” she repeated, “and he gets off my case. Gets off yours, actually,” she corrected, though she wasn’t entirely sure how it was different.

With the microwave behind him, Spike didn’t look all that scary. He was squeezing blood into his mouth from a plastic packet, which was pretty gross, but why Giles could ever think he was a threat to her – for real – Buffy didn’t know. She wasn’t scared of him.

“Rupert Giles doesn’t bother me,” was what he said, and even though he sounded annoyed Buffy knew she had nothing to fear. “You don’t need to do what he says to protect me.”

“I want us all to get along,” Buffy replied, thinking that maybe Spike at least deserved to hear it out loud. “Stuff goes down,” she explained, off his confused look, “then everybody’s gonna need everybody.”

Spike paused. The bag’s last veins of blood sank back to the bottom. When he looked at her, it wasn’t like he couldn’t believe it, but it _was_ like he hadn’t thought to see it coming. “You’re going back there,” he said. _To the dragon._

“I’ve gotta try,” Buffy confirmed, because she wasn’t afraid of this guy. The way Spike looked at her, it was as though she’d hurt his feelings, but they both knew that he would get over it.

This much was obvious from the way Spike asked her, serious and to the point, “Did you tell him?” He nodded his head towards the living room, towards Giles.

“What?” Buffy replied, feeling the size of the kitchen around them, the two yards’ space her voice had to travel. “The part where training’s all gonna be pretty much pointless anyway, if we get it right.”

Spike nodded, sucking the last of the bag.

Buffy shook her head. It was difficult, really, to feel like the whole idea was going to go anywhere, at least while her neck still stung in the shower. Yet it all seemed necessary. It seemed vital. They didn’t have any other ideas, really – and she wasn’t scared of Giles either, but she didn’t know how she was supposed to tell him that. “I figure even Travers has forgotten he suggested it,” she admitted, not thinking about it for the moment. “I haven’t seen him.”

With another, more emphatic nod to the living room, Spike pointed out, “He’s in there.” Then he said what was probably the last sentence Buffy had ever expected to be connected to Quentin Travers. “He’s killing it on the N64. Got Bowser running circles round the rest of ‘em.”

 _Huh._ Buffy ignored that whole issue. It was beside the point. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, shaking her head again. “If it happens, it happens,” she added, rubbing fingers into her forehead as though she could push the tension away. “Otherwise, I figure training’s always useful. We’re gonna need us to be an army.”

Hands in her face, Buffy could still just about watch as Spike approached her. He shoved the remains of his blood bag in his back pocket and easily put himself in her space, curving his hands her upper arms to rub at the muscles. “Mrmm?” he didn’t quite hum, and didn’t quite shush her like a child. It was a much more effective stress-relief.

“Xander’s right, you know,” Buffy added in a lower voice, dropping both her hands to Spike’s chest. She looked up at him and he seemed intrigued by the sight of her. “There’s no privacy in this house,” she told his mouth, imagining the way it had been sucking just a minute ago. They had really been very rudely interrupted before, and she… “If we’re gonna,” she explained, looking up, “we might as well go like Wills and Kennedy and make out on the couch.”

“Oh, please,” Spike mocked her, and his chest rumbled with the words. Rubbing Buffy’s arms all the way down to the elbow, he let her go just enough to open the basement door and step back into darkness. He took her hand. “Unlike you lot,” he accused, “I remember what it means to have class.”

The invitation in his eyes was irresistible. Certainly, Buffy thought, it was a very classy _snick_ that shut the door behind them.

\-- _the next time_ \--

The house was quiet when Buffy came home that afternoon. Nigel and Principal Wood had finally found time in the after school schedule for the girls to get some training in the tennis courts, rather than the backyard. Racquets weren’t too much like axes, really, although some of the ones in the Sunnydale High storeroom weighed the same – but given how some of the girls had been throwing them around when Buffy had left, she wasn’t sure she wanted them on weapons anyway.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely clear whether the girls should be trusted with basic utensils either. Now that they were gone, the house was showing all too many signs of expressly multiple occupancy: the walls were scuffed; part of the repaired coffee table was missing; the couch looked like it had aged ten years and there were crumbs trodden into every tread of the stairs, when there weren’t unidentified stains.

It was weird without the girls, 1630; uncanny. It was even weirder now, when it seemed that almost everybody else was gone too.

Buffy could still see the Seal of Danzalthar glowing in her mind’s eye, malevolence pregnant in the air, and she wondered if it was the wards, making the house feel so strange. Here was the only place in Sunnydale free from the First’s influence. It was an artificially preserved time capsule of a town already lost. Coming home like this, it was tempting to turn around and head straight back out, no matter how much she ws supposed to like the quiet. It was either that or head down to the basement, where Spike was probably sleeping the sleep of the well-sexed unconscious. That hadn’t gone well the last time, though, and Buffy knew he had issues about her using him as an excuse to hide.

Thankfully, the main downstairs wasn’t entirely empty, so Buffy didn’t have to make a choice. Travers was sitting in the dining room, halfway between the books and Willow’s computer stuff like he missed being chair of the board. He was reading the Sunnydale Press with a bemused expression on his face.

“Where is everybody?” Buffy asked when he looked up.

Travers smiled, though his eyebrows remained knitted while he folded the newspaper closed. His right arm was still out of action, so it took him a while. “Apparently,“ he told her as he folded, “the Sunnydale Mall will from tomorrow be closed until further notice. There are sales.”

He nodded at the seat opposite him, then, and Buffy took it, still feeling the awkwardness of this empty house all around her. “What, and people went?” she asked. Not that she blamed them, of course. The mall was a little far for her to get to now she’d already come home, but there were things she might have gone for. “I mean – are you saying _Giles_ went? He let everybody go?”

Now Travers looked up at her, taking hold of the cup of tea that was sitting just to the side of the paper. “The girls are in training,” he said, sounding like Buffy had surprised him with her question. “There is no immediate call on our time.”

“No, I know,” Buffy said immediately, glancing around the empty house again. She could feel Spike almost, stirring with the sense of her, but that wasn’t it, why this place felt so weird. The time was over for all this stuff, wasn’t it? Going to the mall and laughing as Sunnydale hollowed out? “It just seems…”

He was looking at her seriously, Travers, the small white mug just below his chin like he couldn’t decide if he wanted another sip or not. “Are you quite all right, Miss Summers?” he asked, ultimately setting the mug down on the coaster again. “You don’t appear to be yourself.”

Buffy sighed. She knew how she was sitting: half in her chair and half out of it; hands resting on the wooden table. She couldn’t relax – something from the night before had knocked that out of her, or else it was the fear of falling so deep inside herself again. “You can call me Buffy, Mr. Travers,” she said as a distraction, trying to school herself into someone who wasn’t what she was.

“It’s 'Quentin',” Travers replied, as though Buffy had missed her own joke – which, actually, she had. _Great._

Drumming her fingers on the tabletop, Buffy rolled her eyes. “How many apocalypses have you faced, Quentin?” she asked when the question came to her.

He was picking up his tea again, never fazed from the frown he was looking at her with. “Rather too many, I fear,” was his reply.

She was going to ask, _Did you ever work out what to do about the waiting?_ Yet as she clenched her hands to hold them still, Buffy realised this was a weird question, the sort of thing no one asked. The Slayer didn’t wait for the apocalypse: she fought it. She prevented it. That was what Robin wanted from her, the way they all did, so she wasn't sure anymore why she was wasting time.

For some reason, though, that thought sent a shiver through Buffy even stronger than the general pulse of adrenaline she had pumping in her veins.

“Would you care for a game of backgammon?” Travers asked eventually, his tone somewhat more light-hearted. “Maybe best of five?”

“Huh?” Buffy replied stupidly, still caught up in the sight of her bitten-back fingernails. She wondered whether there was a section in the Slayer Handbook about manicures. “I mean…” she covered herself as she actually took the question in. Of course, that was when she realised it was a ridiculous question. “Huh?”

“It’s there on the side behind you,” Travers said, nodding over Buffy’s shoulder. There was an aura of patience around him, but it wasn’t so odd a look with his fisherman’s sweater and his sling.

Turning her body in the chair, Buffy realised that Travers was right. Stacked on the sideboard were about six games she’d never really noticed, including _Risk_ and _Monopoly_ and Xander’s battered version of _The Game of Life_ complete with the stain from where it had landed in the pizza that time. There was also a small and flat wooden box, which Buffy remembered from back home in Los Angeles, even though she’d never played it.

“I don’t know the rules,” Buffy said, even as she leaned back on the chair to take hold of the set. Slayer co-ordination had to be good for something. “Isn’t it just dice and stuff?” She couldn’t let Spike see her like this anyway, she decided as she swung back with the wooden box. It was either this or pointless housework. “I mean,” she added, addressing Travers, “where’s the skill?”

Travers sighed, reaching to take the game from her with his one good hand. “Most games are a question of luck,” he pointed out, opening the catch to set the board flat. “The skill lies in manipulating the odds.”

As he began to lay out the pieces, Buffy wasn’t so sure she wanted to play. It all looked arcane, with the red and black checkers sitting on their art deco points. There were jumps behind her knees and this looked like it was going to be slow, and she was over this – she was over this whole house.

“Now, you’ll have to concentrate while I explain how to play,” Travers said, not unkindly.

Buffy blinked at him. He started talking, and she tried to pay attention, her elbows leant on the dining table and her chin in her hands. It was weird, though. No one had tried to explain to her anything like this in forever, so her attempt to take it all in was like stretching an underused muscle. Or something like that anyway; Buffy hadn’t had an underused muscle even when she’d come back from the dead.

Not for the first time, Buffy wondered what it was like for these Watchers, to have their place of work and their friends all gone, to be flown across the world into a slovenly California residence that was full of children and smelled like a locker room. They didn’t seem to resent it too badly, and yet Buffy thought even she had before today. Possibly there came a time for everyone when you got over that – and possibly she was there right now.

He was patient with her, Travers, once the game had started. He’d play his move and explain it, then tell her her options and let her decide what to do. Buffy found herself resenting him for it, frowning at the board and wishing she could smash it into pieces on the floor. The urge didn’t come to her hands though – not the way it would have done yesterday, and she wondered what it was that she’d become.

.


	13. bodies III

\-- _the next time_ \--

Dawn clocked her the moment they went out for the evening. “So, you’re going on patrol?” she asked as they were hanging in the kitchen, waiting for Spike.

The house was full again, now that everyone had come back from the mall, and the girls were back from the high school, whining. The whole place was full of purchases too – bags and boxes – and they’d interrupted Buffy and Travers' game of backgammon before she’d got to figure out who would win.

“Yeah,” Buffy replied, smiling at Dawn anyway. It had been nice to see her things, at least, and now that part of the day was over.

Of course, her sister was frowning. It was only then Buffy realised that the question hadn’t been about her schedule, the purchases distraction not so much about the purchasing. They’d come from the living room and there was an axe in Buffy’s hands, so the plans should have been pretty clear. That, apparently, was the problem

“We’ll be fine,” Buffy tried to reassure her. Looking down at her blade, she added, “I wouldn’t wait up, you know?”

“You know I worry,” was what Dawn said, darting a glance to the basement door. She looked concerned, and Buffy didn’t know what to tell her. Thankfully, then, she rolled her eyes. “And could I sound any more mommish?”

She said something else, but that was the moment Spike opened up that very basement door. It had been a long day – a long day which had gradually allowed Buffy to relax out from her state of nervous excitement – but the moment she heard that creak it was all on again.

The thing was, Spike was there, up and roused from sleep. Buffy’s eyes shot to his and her nostrils flared with the memory of those eyes locked on hers, the way he’d slid up into her like she was quicksand. She’d come as his conquest, but he’d got her to ride him anyway, still half-dressed and faux-modest in that nightgown she’d found. The ribbons had been untied; the buttons unbuttoned front and back; the shoulders had been sliding down her arms while he held her at the waist. She’d bit her lip, clutching his neck. He’d traced her collarbone, smoothed the bodice aside until the shoulders were at her elbows and useless, commanding her in a voice that was straight from a Dracula movie.

_You feel that? Good. Now come here…_

“I give up,” Dawn said when Buffy came back to the present. “Are you even…? I seriously give up,” her sister added, throwing up her hands as she left the kitchen. She sounded upset.

“Dawn!” Buffy called after her, immediately pulling free of Spike’s gaze to turn and follow her sister. He looked as worried as Buffy felt. “ _Dawn._ ”

In the doorway to the hall, the girl turned around. “I wish I’d got the memo, you know?” She stared Buffy down, her eyes hot and angry. “When you told us before,” she said, “about how you wouldn’t protect us?”

Buffy shook her head, not sure what Dawn was getting at. 

She was in too much shadows, halfway into the hallway, like there wasn’t enough light in this house or too many bulbs had gone. “I should have realised,” Dawn spat. “How you meant you weren’t gonna protect yourself.”

Really, Buffy was speechless. Had they not had this conversation? She looked at her sister and she felt it, she did. She felt loved. She felt like there was a teenager in her corner, full of fire and easy feeling, ready to protect _her_ from anything a teenager could. “I don’t know what to say,” Buffy said, because she wasn’t sure there was any easy way to explain how it wasn’t about that, sometimes.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Dawn replied, damningly. She turned her fury over Buffy’s shoulder, then, casting her words to the vampire who, when Buffy glanced his way, was still standing awkwardly just free from the basement door. “You think I’m some dumb kid, but I know how this goes. I know it.”

That was all Dawn said, before she was spinning and dashing for the stairwell. Buffy clutched the axe in her hands more tightly, unable to go after her.

* * *

“Is Dawn all right?” Spike asked her later, shouldering the axe she’d given him. “Has she said anything to you?”

“About what?” Buffy replied, pulling hair out of her face and shoving her stake back in her waistband.

They’d cleared out a nest, straightened up some kinks: the dust was settling into the grass at the crypt front and it was in so many ways like old times. The moon was high; the wind was light and Buffy’s blood was pumping.

“About me,” Spike replied, oblivious but pretty hot in his coat. “Got a threat to worry about, you know,” he reminded her, glancing around like he was embarrassed. “The little arsonist said I’d wake up on fire if I stepped out of line.”

Buffy smirked, stalking over to him. The vampire watched her hips move, but it was only for a few steps before he looked up to her face, still concerned. _That_ part was the soul. “Are you scared?” she asked him anyway, leaning in to rest her hands on his shapely manly muscles. He breathed. “We could get you a nightlight,” Buffy suggested, going for sly. _Should have put it on the list for the mall…_

That at least made Spike take notice. Even as he pitched his axe to the ground, he frowned at her. “I’m being serious,” he said.

Buffy tried to look innocent. The thing was, she did care about all this stuff, but sooner or later it wasn’t going to matter. As for this fight, it had been a good workout with the stakes more than low enough (apart from hers and Spike’s, which had been just the right height), so she’d been able to enjoy it. Now, afterwards, there was a thing where Slayers weren’t in the mood for serious conversation so much as something else.

“How about a bodyguard?” she suggested, leaning even closer. It was seriously, seriously Bizarre-o-land how good Spike smelled when Buffy got up close to him like this. Cigarettes and vamp dust weren’t a winning combination, and yet.

Again, Spike’s eyes met hers. He glanced at her mouth uncertainly, but he was breathing her in. His fingers appeared to delicately trace Buffy’s lips. “You offering?” he asked softly, before they dropped away to her waist.

Warm with the glow of victory, Buffy tipped her chin up and whispered right into his mouth. “Maybe,” she said, and that was enough for Spike to pull her up against him.

The fireworks were there as always, but this was different. As Buffy laughed, the sound travelled. The cemetery was an open park, clear grass and air around them on all sides. Pretty much all the times Buffy had kissed Spike, she was certain, there had been walls involved, or trees, or refrigerators. Even as their mouths moved against each other now, there was no force in it, like they wouldn’t need support to keep standing up – like one of them wouldn’t end up shoved on the ground.

It felt almost strange. Easy. Like maybe, actually, all of this would be OK. Buffy opened her mouth to the bottom of Spike’s and he caught the move to throw it right back at her; she wanted tongue and tongue was there. It didn’t even seem necessary to clutch at Spike’s t-shirt. She clutched anyway because she wanted to, but she also took the chance to feel him up and trace her fingers under his chin. It was like she could feel everything that was connected into kissing her.

Even with the moon it was dark tonight – yet there were no secrets, no promises that couldn’t be kept. Buffy figured she could have stood in that cemetery forever, stretching herself against the front of Spike’s jeans while she kissed out the last racing beats of her pulse and he remembered how to grope her ass.

The action moved, because they were people with short attention spans. Biting at her ear, Spike nonetheless told her straight, in a grumbly voice, “I’m not as easy as you think.” Buffy rolled her eyes, still working on his neck. Sometimes his prick jumped when she sucked. “For better or worse,” her vampire valiantly continued, “the girl’s important to me. I want things to be right with her.”

There was a muscle between Spike’s shoulders and his throat, not a delt and not quite a neck muscle; it moved when he moved his arm. Buffy figured everybody had one – and its partner on the other side – but on Spike it was her favourite muscle out of all of them.

Giving in, Buffy stopped nipping and just nuzzled into the friendly little hunk of flesh. Spike’s arms, up her back now, relaxed around her into something still sexier than a hug. “She loves you,” Buffy reassured him about Dawn, not without a sigh. It was obvious, wasn’t it? “She’s just… Burned out on it for now.”

Spike held her close, but he didn’t say anything for a long time. Buffy wondered what he was thinking. She was caught up remembering all the parts of him she loved for herself.

Eventually, Spike did up, but his limbs were all a bit wooden when the murmur passed through them. “I don’t deserve her love,” he said, apparently more than able to ignore the ‘burned out’ part.

With her eyes closed shut, Buffy made sure to watch her words. “Who cares?” she asked him, even though the sting in her sinuses made it all almost like the night before.

Spike shuddered, once, but then he was pulling away – rearing back from her and patting down his coat like he was looking for cigarettes. “Haven’t we got vampires to kill?” he asked, flustered and scowling. He picked up his axe.

“Actually…” Buffy took a stance, buffing her nails on her palm. It was fun to watch him, and she wasn’t quite so ready for a re-run of Buffy’s weepy-fest any more than him. However, when Spike finally stopped blustering and looked at her, she knew what she wanted. “I was thinking we could get home early tonight.”

Spike just looked back at her, his expression caught between hope and suspicion.

\-- _back then_ \--

It was a few days before the girls first started laughing at Buffy’s jokes. She hadn’t made any before, but this time she put in the effort – and from the point when they worked, it seemed like the ice was broken.

Around about then, Buffy also realised she was practically enjoying their afternoon training sessions. Mostly she ran the girls through drills, because the thrill seemed to have gone out of that for Lydia, and it was clear as anything that the girls needed some combat discipline. Every now and then she and Nigel set them sparring one another, but they weren’t so great, bar about four of them.

Nonetheless, Travers and Althanea watched every day from the porch with tea and stir-up lemonade while Giles ran the research operation from inside the house. More than once, Buffy caught herself worrying what the Watchers made of her efforts, because no matter what Giles said, this wasn’t a role she was made for. Every now and then, though, she would look back to Travers, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, and he would nod as he drank whatever he was drinking. It was as if for the first time ever she was doing a good job.

By the end of the week, Buffy realised she even wanted to give them some advice.

“OK,” she told Amanda that afternoon. The girl been the first to volunteer for the demonstration; Buffy was growing to like her. “So,” she said, looking at how awkwardly she was standing on the grass. They would have to work on defensive stances. “I want you to attack me. Any way you want – anywhere you feel like.” Going by Amanda’s face, she seemed to think this was a trick. Buffy smiled encouragingly. “Don’t tell me what you’re gonna do – just do it. The thing you think I’ll least expect. Try and lay something on me.”

With no particular beat or rhythm to the opening, because Buffy had at least taught them _that_ , Amanda stepped forward and tried to land one particularly girly kick to Buffy’s shin.

To be fair, it wasn’t what Buffy had been expecting. Nonetheless, she stepped easily to the side so the sun was on her back and she was facing the crowd of girls. “So it didn’t land,” she said, raising her voice to make sure the rest of the group were paying attention. They didn’t precisely look bored. “Now, Amanda,” she addressed the girl, who had her front foot now not far from where Buffy had been standing, “don’t move.” she said and Amanda held herself. “It doesn’t matter, right?” she explained. “You can’t have really thought you were gonna get me anyway.”

The Potential shook her head, clenching her hands in fists ahead of her. She was frowning, her face all confused and freckley, waiting for the next instruction.

“But what I want you to tell me,” Buffy said, raising her finger to make sure everyone got that this was an important point, “is what am I gonna do next? How am I gonna come at _you?_ ”

“Umm…” Amanda began, clearly racking her brains for an answer. Her hands relaxed slightly, because she clearly hadn’t been expecting this. “I don’t know,” she said. “Anywhere?”

 _Anywhere??_ “Well, sure,” Buffy replied, going for patience. “Maybe.” _Or maybe not._ “But I’m an experienced fighter, right?” she reminded them all. Amanda nodded, tucking her hair behind her ears when the breeze blew it. “So what am I gonna want,” Buffy asked, “to make sure this fight goes my way?”

They knew this. All of them knew this, Buffy was sure of it. Thankfully, even as Amanda turned pink, she seemed to remember. “To get me on the ground, or back against a wall.”

“Right,” Buffy agreed, smiling. She glanced around to make sure the others had heard. Kennedy was rolling her eyes, like this was baby stuff; Vi had her notebook in her hand. Caridad looked intent, like she was anticipating the next point. “Good,” Buffy continued, turning back to Amanda. “And what’s the easiest way to do that?”

“Catching me off-balance?” Amanda replied quickly, like she was remembering this now. She looked hopeful.

Buffy nodded. “And what’s your balance like right now?”

Amanda looked down at herself, wobbling in various directions in her sneakers. The wind blew. She had one foot in front of the other, her kicking foot slightly over-extended where it had landed in Buffy’s wake. Like usual, Buffy knew she could have Amanda the Vampire on her back and staked in about three seconds flat, but she was hoping Amanda the Potential would figure out how to survive a little longer.

“I’m OK,” Amanda began hesitantly, “you know, forwards and backwards?” She wobbled again on the grass to make the point, not moving very far. “But side-to-side…” In that direction she teetered in the wind, like a willow tree about to snap. “I’m not so good.”

“So where am I gonna hit you?” Buffy asked her, putting the girl straight on the spot.

Amanda looked back, the sun lit on her face. “In the side,” she said, and it at last wasn’t a question.

“So what are you gonna do?”

It was like magic, then. In a move that was almost actually elegant, Amanda leaned into her front foot and pivoted on the lawn, ninety degrees away from Buffy. She then stepped backwards – one, two steps – and any weak flank that Buffy had had her eye on was completely vanished from view. The girl’s strongest front was facing her again and she had all the leverage in the world to capitalise on a weakness Buffy might choose to reveal.

On top of that, she was standing in a way that was finally, at last, a decent defensive position.

“And that’s what we call finishing your attack,” Buffy told the girls. “Good job,” she added to Amanda, who smiled but didn’t move, like she was trying to imprint her own muscle memory. “Any time you make an extension,” Buffy continued loudly, looking at the group of bright faces, “you need to know what your follow-up attack’s gonna be if it hits and what your get-out move is gonna be if it doesn’t. That’s the key. Any questions?” she finished.

One hand rose, not so tentatively as it might once have done.

“Molly,” Buffy called on her.

The girl stood up on her toes, raising her voice from near the back of the crowd. “What if he goes at you from the front anyway,” she asked, “the vampire?”

Buffy frowned, wondering what Molly’s point was. She thought they’d been over this. “Well, you’ll be OK, ‘cause you’re in balance, right?” she tried to repeat yesterday’s lesson. “You can hit him straight back.”

“Yeah,” Molly agreed, clearly not happy with that entirely. “But, like,” she explained, “before that, you’ve not gone over backwards, I get that… But you’re gonna get your nose smashed in, even if you make the move that Mandy made.”

The way Molly said it, it was like a broken nose was the worst thing she could imagine happening. Buffy really wasn’t sure what to tell her. It was another one of those moments in training that she’d been dreading, when they all looked at her and she felt terribly, terribly old. “I…” she began, unable to think of a nice way to say it. The wind was still breezy. “Yes,” Buffy agreed.

“So what do you do,” Molly pushed the question, “if he doesn’t go for you where you’re weakest? If he goes for you where you’re strong?”

“You – you keep going,” Buffy said, warming up to this point. The crowd didn’t look terribly happy about it, but it didn’t look like they were angry with her – yet. “I mean,” she persisted, “that’s what’s gonna lose him the fight, if he keeps fighting like that.”

She looked back to Amanda, who was set in her defensive stance, her forward-back line of balance the best.

“Say I hit Amanda in the face right now,” Buffy made the example, gesturing with a light fist on this warm afternoon. Instinctively, Amanda’s hands started coming up and Buffy nodded approvingly, looking back to Molly. “Maybe she gets a broken nose, but she could also grab me – do whatever. It would be a waste of a hit.”

There were birds hanging out in the trees. Nigel was chattering to Giles. It sounded idyllic almost, her garden, all the while Buffy taught them about pain.

The girls didn’t look happy, but Buffy tried to tell them. “Our bodies can take a hell of a lot of punishment before we fall down and die, you know?” She looked at each of them, wondering how many had ever felt it – if any of them ever would. “You’ve gotta learn it,” she said, even knowing that it couldn’t really be taught, “which are the hits you wanna take and which are the ones you wanna avoid. Pain itself…” she finished. “It’s just a distraction. The question’s how you’re gonna win the fight.”

The mood soured. Buffy felt it as Amanda slipped back into the crowd, as they all looked away from her eyes. It felt like rejection, the way it had in the weeks before, as though this experience Buffy had was unsightly. It was as though _she_ was the problem in their lives, not the Bringers or the First. She was the thing they had to fight.

Another hand rose into the air. “Yes, Kennedy,” Buffy said, grateful for the distraction.

“Can I have a go?” she asked, her expression like spits of fire.

Buffy knew she had walked into this, starting a demonstration where the girls got a chance to hit her. “Tomorrow,” she agreed anyway, looking around at the demoralisation she’d wrought yet again. “We’ve had enough training for today.”

* * *

Like a good little Slayer, Buffy checked on the researchers before she found out what the plans were for dinner. There was nothing going on she needed to know about, but it seemed like they’d strengthened the wards again. Giles looked proud and Willow smiled with fear in her eyes.

When it was clear Anya had dinner under control as well, Buffy waited until she scurried somewhere to let herself into the basement. It was easy.

When she shut the door this time, also, Buffy discovered that Xander had apparently found a moment in the last few days to fit a lock. Whether it was a gesture of goodwill or the first part of a plan which included Xander and Anya co-opting what was clearly her and Spike’s private space, Buffy didn’t know.

As she pulled the bolt across, Buffy decided, as the saying went, that she didn’t care. _I owe you, Xand-man…_

Downstairs, Spike was sat up against the wall, some old book in his hand. He looked pretty into it, but Buffy caught the way he peered at her over the top of the pages. Rather unceremoniously, then, because she knew he would’ve checked the page number the moment he’d heard the door, she pulled the book out of his hands and dumped herself in his lap.

Straddled up close to the guy who’d pretty much signed a contract to make her life more about the happy, Buffy pouted and threw the book somewhere else. “The Potentials were mean to me,” she said, planning to ignore the real problem.

“Oh, poor baby,” Spike humoured her, a pout of his own on his face. His hands found the various curves of her ass and thighs – made her wriggle. Even if there wasn’t a contract, he seemed to enjoy making things right anyway. “You want me to make them apologise?”

“No…” Buffy allowed, her gaze slipping to the brickwork. She could admit to herself, really, that it wasn’t anybody’s fault. “But you could take your shirt off,” she addressed Spike again, as though this was an idea that had only just come to her.

Lightness all over his face, Spike laughed. “Is that right?” he asked, leaning a little forward from the wall.

“Yuh-huh,” Buffy agreed as he reached back over his head, doing as she bid. Really, she was already feeling better. “And then you can kiss me,” she added, helping Spike pull himself free, “and then you can tell me I was never so self-obsessed when _I_ was sixteen.”

That idea made Spike laugh again, so Buffy figured her work down here was mostly done. Of course, she was then pulled into the kind of kiss that sent most thoughts of being sixteen out of the window. She wasn’t quite sure how Spike did it, since this was mostly one long drag on her lower lip and the tips of her teeth, but it pulled her bolt upright all the same.

“Mmm,” Buffy told him afterwards, both arms around his neck. She wasn’t making use of the chest Spike had just given her to play with, but she figured she’d get there. “Never getting tired of that.”

“And you were never, ever – and still remain to become – self-obsessed,” Spike intoned, like a schoolboy forced to pledge allegiance – before he winked.

Buffy grinned, caught up in her need to blush as she looked down. “So, how was your day?” she asked, figuring it was time to start her work on the Chest-o-Spike in front of her. There was a ticklish spot under one of his ribs, but she’d forgotten which one and where. The only option, really, was to start from the top. She had to check these pectorals for new places too. They were flexy.

“It was all right,” Spike replied, forbearing her investigation. Parts of him were clearly enjoying it, as Buffy was in just the right position to recognise. She had a mission, and it involved the other thing she was good at, apart from fighting. The thing no one asked her advice for. “I only woke up a couple of hours ago,” the object of her mission continued, not complaining.

That was around the time she’d come home from work, Buffy imagined. _Not_ that she was self-obsessed; it was simply the sort of thought Spike’s actions were prone to encourage. “Mmm hmm,” Buffy continued, maintaining her concentration. The top ribs were clean. “And what are your plans this evening?”

“Eh,” Spike hedged, casually, playing with a piece of her hair. He pulled on it experimentally. “Might go out – might stay in. It depends, really, on…”

As Buffy moved ribs, his breath hitched, breaking into his sentence. _Bingo,_ Buffy thought. She’d found her tickly spot.

As she glanced up, it was clear that Spike knew it too. He looked at her and Buffy looked at him, and in an instant she was going in for the strike while he grabbed at her hands to try and wrestle her away.

They’d been doing this a lot the last few days: making out; fooling around. It was fun as all get out – and, considering how boring the rest of 1630’s entertainments were, there were moments when Buffy thought she was the luckiest Slayer there had been. Sometimes she needed a situation where she knew how to win.

Of course, there wasn’t all that much room on the small single bed, but they had a good throw around anyway. Buffy was able to swallow back her shrieks, for the sake of everyone upstairs, but giggles took up what felt like permanent residence in her nose as she flexed and tried to free her fingers from Spike’s hands.

She got him on his side, squished between the bed and the wall, but then Spike was complaining and she yielded, just a little, enough for him to take aim for Buffy’s own ribs where her shirt had ridden up.

Then she wasn't winning anymore. “You are such a – cheater!” Buffy accused, trying to squirm free. Spike was as merciless as she was, though, so it wasn’t easy. She ended up hanging backwards over the side of the bed with her legs were hooked under Spike’s arms.

“Gotta say ‘mercy’, love,” Spike told her, looking down from above. Apparently this was what they said in England. Spike had told her once, last year. She’d always resisted.

“Never!” she told him again, right now. Really, Buffy knew when she’d been beaten, and it wasn’t all that much worse than winning. The thing was, there were several ways to give in, and she’d long decided it was her prerogative to choose her favourite.

Hiccoughing with her giggles, Buffy grabbed Spike’s head by his ears and his hair. He complained, but she distracted him by sticking a thumb inside his mouth, then encouraged him down to her bellybutton where he would get the idea she wanted attention at a few proxy orifices.

For all their fooling around, after all, there hadn’t been too much more than that. A lot of feeling each other up; a lot of her getting Spike out of his shirt because he didn’t really need one anyway. No more than that.

And that was fine by her, really. Buffy knew they should take plenty of careful time. The thing was, she also knew she couldn’t help it that certain parts of her felt rejected.

Lying back, Spike’s hands were flat on her ribs to hold her safely on the edge of the bed. He was tonguing her more than enthusiastically. Figuring she was half upside down anyway, Buffy blinked past the stars on her vision and decided it was time to help her shirt come down the rest of the way off, because she didn’t see why she shouldn’t. She grabbed her sports bra on the way, taking that too, even though the suggestion it had fallen free on its own was going to be a little less believable.

When she was done, Buffy took one more shallow breath and crunched upwards, ready for the consequences. She dragged her way back around onto the mattress and lifted Spike’s head by the chin, forcing him to look at her. There was no doubt in her mind where she wanted him, but there was kissing to be done first.

Of course, Spike did better to banish her last seed of uncertainty on the way. When their eyes met, it was like he pretty much had plans to devour her whole, and he crawled forward onto one elbow so his shoulder was hunched like a panther’s. As his other hand trembled, right at the top of her stomach, Buffy figured this was it for her.

“Say it,” Spike whispered, just before their lips met. He kept a small gap between them.

“Mercy,” Buffy gave in, then met him halfway. What was the point in holding back?

They kissed for a long time then, until Buffy was short of breath and she had pretty much every single hair on Spike’s head pulled up into tufts. His hand didn’t lose its tremble, stroking her ribs and then upwards a little, hooking the web of his thumb and forefinger into the part of her where muscle changed to flesh. Pretty much every time their lips met his thumb would close in, but then he’d pull away down to her stomach, in a move somewhere between a tease and an escape. Buffy just kissed harder, sucking at Spike’s tongue so that he would _get_ the _picture_.

It was natural – completely natural, if very much encouraged – when Spike eventually kissed down her chin and the front of her throat, avoiding the bruises on her neck and grazing blunt teeth down her sternum where she had it arched. Buffy moaned and panted and gasped, cradling his head and encouraging him when _finally_ , after a week of kissing her, Spike realised how some other tender parts required his mouth’s attention.

It didn’t go as planned. Maybe it was because they’d been acting like children; Buffy couldn’t say. The sweat on her was starting to evaporate and she was shivering. She figured it was the same with him, so she didn’t set much store in it when Spike shuddered fully, the first time. She was busy, mostly, enjoying the moment.

One second, though, Spike was kissing her boob – sucking on it. Suckling. The next he had stopped, a huge shiver and a cough running through him to splat a nasty, hot breath of air right on her chest.

“Spike?” Buffy asked, confused, her eyes blinking open.

He looked at her. He just looked at her, like he couldn’t be sure he knew who she was anymore. From the back of her mind, Buffy recalled a story Spike hadn’t told her the details of, about his mother, from the trigger trip with Lydia.

He was starting to pull away, self-disgust screwing up his face. “Oh no – _honey_ …” Buffy found herself saying, sitting up so he was no longer the one in her arms.

There wasn’t really anywhere Spike could go, so all he did was shove himself back against the wall, knees up to his chest and his face in his hands. He didn’t even leave the bed. A grim frown was set on his mouth, like he was refusing to cry and possibly failing.

Buffy ignored all of it, wriggling between his arms and legs so he would hold her, which he did. Once she was there it was like Spike was never going to let go, and he kissed her temple fiercely, shaking. “God, pet, I’m sorry… I’m… There’s…”

Ultimately, Buffy couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t pissed off. They’d been together for… Well, it depended on when you booked the anniversary, but all this time Spike had completely failed to tell her that this trauma the First had been using about his mother had any sort of sexual side to it. For a start, it sounded creepy, and she figured she had a right to know about creepy. Second of all, Buffy didn’t think she was that bad a listener.

And yet, even though it was a surprise to herself, it seemed as though Buffy could sometimes be reasonable. The thought crossed through her mind and a voice came right back with the counterargument. Spike was telling her about it _now_ , wasn’t he? What more could she ask from him?

With a slight feeling of helplessness, Buffy tucked her arms between their chests and listened. She couldn’t do it, she realised. She couldn’t be angry with Spike. She couldn’t keep hitting on him and hitting on him and expect for everything to work out fine. He wasn’t ready for that any more than anybody else was.

“I dunno what to do,” Spike admitted as he finished the story. Buffy had long let her eyes fall shut. She wondered if his were closed too. “She was good to me, all my life,” he explained into her jaw. “And I betrayed her, the way I do. Now you’re being good to me with all this – stuff, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before…”

“I’m being good to you,” Buffy promised him, “because…” She held herself back, wondering what she had to give him. “Because I want to.”

Never could it be said she didn’t have trauma of her own, after all.

“Tell me what you need,” she added, kissing Spike on the ear and poking her tongue in just a little – because she couldn’t not be weirdly horny when she was here like this.

In response, Spike at least laughed a snuffly sort of laugh. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding honest, and pretty much like there would be no sex this evening. “I find myself afraid when I shouldn’t be, wishing I wasn’t… So weak.”

“Who told you you were weak?” Buffy asked, shoving her libido back inside its homey little box. She’d figure a plan for that later. This was more important. “They were lying.” Everyone needed a break sometimes, after all. Even her.

“It’s what she said,” Spike admitted, the tears dry on his eyes when Buffy kissed them. “After she… After I –”

“Lying,” Buffy repeated, opening her eyes to look Spike in the face. And, OK, it was difficult to get her libido box entirely closed, even if her chest and the rest of her was off-limits. “You’re gonna prove it, right?” she told his hungry expression, glancing down at herself and what were now some pretty sexy-looking walls. She could lose. She could happily lose for this.

 _Just call me Scarlet O’Hara,_ Buffy thought, as Spike swept her off the bed.

His heart wasn’t really in it, of course, but Buffy made up for that.

.


	14. bodies IV

\-- _back then_ \--

Dinner was over by the time she and Spike came back upstairs from their make-out session. It had gone on a little longer than planned. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and the thick smell of chicken casserole, and while the house was full of TV noise and girls running up and down the stairs as they found their respective buddies for tonight’s sleepover, there was no one exactly there to deal with it.

In another life, Buffy figured this would have been the moment to worry that they’d been loud, even if they hadn’t got to the part where she completely lost control over her vocal chords. She couldn’t believe it though. You would have barely been able to hear a radio in here over the sound of everybody else, so how any group eating dinner would have heard her and Spike smooching she did not know.

“Watchers are out back,” Spike told her then, distracting Buffy’s gaze from the grizzly offering of however many chicken bones and ligaments and bits it was sitting on the newspaper in the middle of the counter. He’d gone over to the back door, apparently, and was peering through the Venetian blind. “Doesn’t look like they’re finished yet.”

From the look of him, he wasn’t going to say anything about what had just happened in the basement. Of course, Spike had the superpower of looking young and angst-free forever, so to look at him there weren’t even many signs. His hair was kind of a mess, but he’d run a comb through that, and he wasn’t flushed at all. With the duster on, he looked mostly the way he always looked, while Buffy could feel it where she was starting to stink. Her shirt had been sweaty from her workout with the Potentials anyway, let alone what Spike had reduced her to.

“Pet?” Spike asked her after she’d been staring for a while. For an instant, he looked like he wanted her, like a grown-up who wasn’t actually used to making out for extended periods of time without getting much beyond second base. Possibly Buffy was projecting. Nonetheless the look was gone in an instant - as he clenched his jaw, huffed a sigh of air down his nose and turned to lean his back against the door. “What’s wrong now?” he asked, crossing his arms.

Honestly, Buffy didn’t think it was fair that this was her fault. Maybe it was – who knew? – but it didn’t feel like it should be. There Spike was, looking all annoyed with her and swathed in black and boots like he was dressed for battle even though he was just in her house. OK, he was looking defensive, but with that he still seemed scratchy and spontaneous as ever, like he was on edge and dangerous.

It shouldn’t have been so hard for him to take her a little further past 3-2-1 on the countdown to Buffy’s Big Zero, really. She’d had closer shaves in the shower.

And this wasn’t fair, Buffy knew. This was all the squirmy, needy parts of her talking. “I stink,” was what she said, eventually, because that part at least was true. She didn’t know how to be this thing Spike needed, probably someone who didn’t smell quite so much, who didn’t accost him in the late afternoon and shove her tongue down his throat.

Spike quirked an eyebrow. Looking around the kitchen again, Buffy figured there were probably more important things to worry about.

“This whole place stinks,” she added, her eyes falling on the pile of chicken waste again. “What the hell are we gonna do with all that?” She tried for light-hearted. “We’re gonna get ants,” she said. “Or foxes. Or, you know, those big scavenger demons with the sucky faces.” Which wasn’t to say Buffy wasn’t appreciative of the big scavenger demons with the sucky faces, who lurked somewhere in the middle of Restfield and spent most of their time hoovering up dead demon parts, from what she could tell. But she didn’t want them in her yard.

“Could cook it up into stock,” Spike suggested, as though this was a real topic of conversation. “Then we could have soup tomorrow.”

From what Buffy could tell, he wasn’t even faking. This was a legitimate suggestion. “Ew,” Buffy told him, stressing how that was actually a disgusting idea. “Spike,” she reminded him, “people have eaten off of those bones.”

“And that’s why you boil ‘em up, innit?” Spike reminded her, crossing the six feet between them again. Buffy was conscious of her own smell, but he didn’t seem to care, making her blush as his fingers caught the backs of her elbows and spider-walked up to her bare shoulders. “Waste not want not. It’s not like anyone’s dying of cholera in there.”

“Spike…” Buffy sighed, breathing in the not-stinky smell of him. They’d just done this; she had the grazes on her shoulder blades to prove that they had just done this. Looking into his eyes, though, with the noise of the house behind them, she knew she wanted to do it all over again. She wanted him to do it and keep doing it. It felt like a sickness.

The smile in Spike’s expression was all too painfully sympathetic. Buffy guessed that after he’d done his opening up, it was her turn to say something profound, but that wasn’t her forte at all. More than that, she wasn’t sure if Spike really did need to hear things from her, to know what she was thinking. Sure, he probably wanted it, but it seemed to her that what Spike actually needed was to know his own feelings.

In the end, Buffy settled for smoothing Spike’s tufty hair back down into something resembling the weird helmet that he liked. A lopsided smile-frown dragged on her face, but there was enough gel still left in his hair that she could almost get it to lie flat, so she wasn’t a complete failure.

Of course, Spike said nothing while she worked, just breathed like he was inhaling her. The freak.

“Ahem.”

They both looked around, drawing away from each other’s arms. The doorway to the back porch was open now, and Althanea was standing there with four glasses held in her fingers, Lydia just behind her holding dirty plates and crockery. The Watcher was looking in the middle distance somewhere, her face not nearly as pink as Buffy would have expected. Althanea just looked amused, her spare hand held in a half-hearted fist in front of her mouth.

“Do you mind if we do a little washing up?” she asked.

Buffy glanced over to the sink again, at the pile of housework just begging for someone else to do it. She glanced at Spike, who mostly looked like he was gonna talk about soup again.

“Sure,” Buffy said, wondering how she was going to rescue this place. At least the gas people had stopped even trying to send out bills to Sunnydale: it meant they could run the water heater all day. “I’m gonna go take a shower, but there should be enough hot.”

* * *

Of course, it took far less time to wash a Buffy than it took to wash the sheer number of dirty dishes produced by 1630 Revello Drive. By the time Buffy came back downstairs, dressed in jeans and some casual floaty top she’d found on the floor of her closet and didn’t smell too bad, things were much as they’d been before. The girls were slightly more settled, but Lydia and Althanea were still in the kitchen. Lydia seemed to have got herself into a rhythm at the sink, while Althanea was tending to three of their biggest pans on the stove.

The whole place still smelled like chicken, but the window was open, and there was a another acrid-herbal thing going on now.

“You’re not actually making stock, are you?” Buffy asked, scrunching her towel-dried hair. It didn’t seem so weird, really, now that Althanea in her grandmotherly shawls was standing in front of the boiling pots, but Buffy wanted to make the point on principle.

The witch turned around from her cauldrons, abandoning what looked like a wooden spoon in the biggest. “Of course!” she said, smiling the smile of someone who knew how to run a household. “It was an excellent idea. I spoke to Anya before she and Xander left,” she added, “and it sounds as though SuperSave’s ordering hasn’t yet caught up with the declining demand, so there should be lots on offer tomorrow. I thought we might have risotto.” She left this statement hanging, as though Buffy was supposed to have an opinion.

Hoping for the lesser of two crazy, British evils, Buffy turned to Lydia, who was arm-deep in bubbles.

The woman noticed, half glancing over her shoulder and then jumping so that she could look at Buffy properly. “Don’t worry,” she said, as if the expression on Buffy’s face was hilarious: she looked sympathetic, but then also as though she could hardly keep from bursting out laughing. “Spike pointed out we were to remove all trace of ‘nastiness’, as he put it.”

“The magic of magic,” Althanea added, before she turned back to her stove.

From somewhere in the recesses of her brain, Buffy was getting the memory of some long ago Thanksgiving, with the women in the kitchen after the turkey and everybody else somewhere other. The TV made sense with that too, although Buffy felt bad she’d missed Xander and Anya heading to their apartments for the night, because she was basically slacking in her duties as the host. Really, in the memory she could have only been ever getting in the way or stealing an extra slice of pecan pie, but it was kind of nice all the same.

The thing was, her memory definitely didn’t include a lifetime’s supply of chicken stock, nor else a red-faced Watcher doing dishes in that weird British way that left all the dirt in the water to get on the next SuperSave stoneware plate, and suds on it while it dried. Yet at this point in the apocalypse everyone knew some things had to be sacrificed. “Is there anything I can do to help?” Buffy asked, because even if she was training the girls, she didn’t want to go and watch _Friends_ with them.

“Oh no, don’t be silly,” Althanea replied. Lydia was clanking plates again. “I think –” the witch added, giving the nearest pot a final poke with her spoon. “Yes,” she said, glancing back to Buffy, “I can leave that for a few minutes. Why don’t I make us a nice cup of tea?”

It was almost too relaxing to be real. Thankfully, as Althanea got to fussing with the electric kettle which had appeared from somewhere that was possibly the same place as the microwave, the back door opened with a resolute, plasticky yank.

“… you tell him,” Spike was saying, because he was always going to be Buffy’s saviour from the Twilight Zone of normality, “I’ve got his number and if he wants words, we’ll have words.”

He threw the end of his cigarette somewhere that at least wasn’t the inside of the house, and then grunted in reply to something unintelligible that Nigel(?) said. Then Spike was storming nonchalantly back into the house and raising his head to look at Buffy with his bright blue eyes. “Oh, hello, love,” he said, looking her up and down. “Nice shower?”

It wasn’t an innuendo, really. Nonetheless, Buffy couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious. She patted a hand to her wet hair, which was trailing and curling around one of her shoulders.

Lydia, of course, snorted, with her bubbles.

“What’s that, Chalmers?” Spike shot at her, while Buffy took a seat at the greasy counter. He came over too, and even sat by her side as though this wasn’t a moment for them both to be a little less obvious. “You got soap up your nose?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Lydia shot back, barely glancing over her shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, _William_.”

It was that moment Buffy recognise the snark for what it was. Feeling a little put out, she reached for Spike’s hand between their thighs, not going near the countertop until somebody wiped it. “First she goes in your head and now this?” she asked the guy next to her, feeling a pout coming on. “I thought the bitching was our thing.”

Spike had his other elbow leaning on the table, as though he didn’t even care about his stupid coat anymore. Of course, he squeezed her hand as he leaned his chin in his palm, but he still played the game. “It’s true,” he said, as though none of it could be helped. “All the birds want me now.” He nodded to Althanea, who was weaving around Lydia for water. “Me and Thea here have got a sordid assignation down the bushes later.”

Rolling her eyes, Buffy tried to suppress a grin. She wondered what they’d actually all talked about, when she’d gone for her shower – if it was anything other than chicken stock, which was the most absurd thing to be making, really, as if they were settling in for winter when it had been gone 80 that afternoon. Maybe the risotto would take the whole of it, but it seemed like a whole waste of energy to make stuff to keep in this house.

That didn’t entirely explain Spike, of course – not the way he looked at her.

“Believe me,” Lydia addressed her, though Buffy was only half-listening. “You are more than welcome to that walking – _grand malade_ and his psychological miscontent.”

“Oi!” Spike replied, distracted. He actually sounded offended, which was possibly fair? “I think _grand_ is a bit much.”

“I suggest then that _you_ consult _The Times’_ microfiches for every year of the 1880s,” Lydia replied. “Preferably on a spate of roaring hangovers. Then you might reach your own conclusions.”

It was all moving too slowly, that was what Buffy figured. She skipped the French, but looking around the kitchen it was like her house was actually a well-oiled machine of daily routines and – stock. For some reason it made Buffy wonder whether Giles was right. Not about anything to do with Spike or else to do with her importance to the Potentials, really, but about the mood they were supposed to be living in. There was an impending something on the horizon, and Buffy was struck by the sudden worry that she was the only one who felt it.

“Is no one concerned that we’re all gonna die?”

Really, Buffy didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the words came out anyway, interrupting whatever the argument about Spike’s mental health had dissolved into. The kettle was steaming, a little way from boiled where it sat by the toaster behind Althanea’s back; the pots on the stove were simmering to her side. Lydia was leaning against the sink, holding a towel in her hands. They both looked concerned, but neither of them were looking at her.

Spike was still holding onto her hand, and his grip was tight and bony. The look on his face was though he feared for her. It was sort of like the expression he’d had both times when he’d walked away from her during the whole business with the shadowcasters, but Buffy hadn’t recognised it then. The thing was, he didn’t say anything either.

“Well?” Buffy tried to address all three of them again, slumping in her stool without any support. “Is this what we’re doing here? Just – taking stock and…” Crap, she’d meant to say something more momentous; less pun-like. Oh well. “And making stock?” She caught Spike’s eye. “I don’t wanna defend him of the angry grumble-faces, but don’t you think Giles –”

“Rupert Giles,” Lydia interrupted, “is wrong.” She looked stubborn about this point, and it was at that moment a very weird sight to see, given how twitchy Lydia’s usual expression was. Her eyes were all flinty, in a way that made Buffy nearly flinch. “To think only from battle to battle, always in the short term and never in the long, is a sure way to find oneself without reserve, without perspective and without hope.”

As the kettle kicked into its final, bubbling gear, Buffy looked down, to the side. She would never have said she was without hope, exactly, but the problem was that she knew, as well as anybody if not better, surely, that you did still need to win the battle in order to keep going.

Spike kicked at her foot with his, but Buffy didn’t look around to him. She knew the end was coming, after all, but she didn’t know how to make anybody else see it. She wasn’t sure she actually wanted to make anybody else see it as clearly as she did.

“As far as I am aware,” Althanea then interrupted the awkward silence, “we are none of us in battle right as this particular moment. Perhaps this conversation is best kept for another day.”

The kettle clicked off, and then the witch was making them all tea.

Of course, Buffy couldn’t keep herself to herself forever. Spike was rubbing his thumb over the back of the hand he was clasping, and it was all very distracting. He was leaning on the countertop again, looking at her as though he knew exactly what she was planning. It was strange, though, because Buffy didn’t really know herself. Else, maybe, she didn’t want to think about it.

\-- _the next time_ \--

With patrol finished early, the pair of them made it home around midnight, more than six hours before Buffy had to be up and ready for the demands of the day. The kitchen was dark and quiet as they moved through it – Buffy locked the back door as Spike loaded the cupboards with the crockery long dry by the sink. After the night before, it was strange to watch him play her house. He put all the open food back away as well and for a moment Buffy expected him to start on another set of dishes.

He didn’t. But when he was finished he did seem surprised to find Buffy leaning back against the basement door, arms crossed behind her back and one knee cocked a little, casually. That was fine by her. “You’re kind of domestic, you know that?” she said to him, like her eyes were on his face and not only on his mouth.

“Figured us soldiers all have to play our parts,” Spike replied, his voice as low as hers.

Buffy raised both her eyebrows, as if to question what he thought that role was. As he started over, she turned the handle on the door behind.

It was fun to feel her heart race, right as Spike was slipping by. She followed and tucked the door closed – only to find herself pressed against it.

The kiss that followed was heady, like the ones just in the graveyard. It made Buffy wish her knees would buckle to have her senses so filled with Spike after such a long day, _especially_ as he locked the door. Alas, her buckling was over.

As heady as it was though, this kiss was short, end-of-the-night-ish. Afterwards, Buffy was content to wrap her arms around her vampire’s neck and have him lean against her, foreheads and noses touching and their eyes all shut, the pair of them breathing in the same ripple of air. “And you’re all right then,” Spike asked her, the most personal question anyone had that day, “after everything?”

“Of course,” Buffy replied, slipping her head beside his so they were actually in a hug. There would be no mention of the crying from last night’s sexfest. “I…”

Spike’s arms tightened around her waist, and for a moment Buffy felt it. She felt different, indescribably so. With her eyes shut, she tried to summon an understanding of the feeling, so she could tell Spike about it or else at least figure out what it meant for them.

“I think I’m ready,” Buffy concluded, even though it was only in a whisper. “For what lies ahead.”

When she first tried to pull back from the hug, Spike wouldn’t let her go. He made no other immediate response to her statement, and then an instant later he was tearing himself away from her and leading them both down the stairs.

“How’s that?” he asked, and one step behind him Buffy could only guess at his expression.

Nonetheless, she followed him, letting go of his hand only to shrug off her jacket and sling it over the newel post. “I… I have confidence, I guess?” she suggested, not really so sure about it even as she paused to unzip her boots. Everything inside her was turned the wrong way around. She didn’t know how she felt. “I think before I was worried… Well, I mean, the Shadowmen were all kinds of wrong, but you have to know who you are, right, before you accept any kind of…”

Boots unzipped, removed and left by the stairs, Buffy trailed off as she looked back up. Her gaze had fallen to Spike, naturally, but what was weird was that she could see him looking back at her. The horrible strip lights hadn’t been turned on, but there was a gentle, warm shadowy glow highlighting the angles of his face. OK, it got the tired lines as well, but it was almost how she remembered him in candlelight.

A quick glance towards the bed revealed the culprit. At some point during the day Spike had found an unused table lamp, one Buffy didn’t recognise and figured might have once been part of her mother’s décor for the dining room. The ceramic base was cracked and missing a chunk – it leaned drunkenly against the wall as it cast orange light through its shade.

That end of the bed, the foot of it, also had something new folded underneath it – a blanket, as far as Buffy could tell, something fuzzy. As for the sheets, it looked like they’d been ironed.

“Did you make things nice down here for me?” Buffy asked the guy who was her boyfriend, instantly distracted as she took in the cosy set-up.

“Not _just_ for you,” Spike replied defensively, looking to one side of her.

Buffy had no shame not to take in the view. Spike was standing by his boxes and piles of things and clothes, which seemed neater somehow, his duster in folds on top of them and his boots unlaced where he’d just stepped free of them.

“You’ve got a delicate complexion,” Spike accused, continuing with his defensiveness as the silence hung. A glance her way and then he was scratching the back of his head. “Can’t see you right when it’s as dark as all get out.”

“You made things nice for me,” Buffy confirmed as she came over to him, just before she started pulling his t-shirt from his jeans. “You didn’t have to, you know,” she added conspiratorially, dragging cotton up his chest to reveal one well-lit plane of skin.

“Didn’t know when you’d next be down here,” Spike confessed easily, into his t-shirt, before she managed to get it over his head.

Appreciating the view, Buffy looped her fingers through Spike’s belt-loops and dragged his naked chest towards her – walking backwards until she was sat on the edge of the bed. There was something underneath her, like Spike had boosted the crappy mattress and put cushions under the sheets – outdoor chair cushions, she realised, as she wriggled into the crease and felt the ties. Yeah, they never used those.

Spike was oblivious to how such unexpected pampering was turning Buffy on. It was all a waste of time, his playing Martha Stewart, and yet…

He continued blithely. “Could’ve been… Thought it might not be till after,” he said, even as she popped his buttons. “You know, after… After everything.”

Buffy tapped her hands at the back of Spike’s calves, not listening. Obligingly, he shuffled forward, knees either side of her thighs.

Even as Buffy pulled down the zip on his jeans, Spike didn’t stop yammering. “Didn’t know what you’d be like,” he said. “Figured you’d be bitchy, maybe imperious.” It was comforting, really, Buffy thought. She curled her index fingers back into the handy loops of his waistband, parting the fly around Spike’s rather buoyant erection. “Well, you know, more than usual,” he carried on sarcastically. “Or… _Oh._ ”

Curling her fingers into fists, Buffy was glad to have something to hang onto as she suppressed her gag reflex and slid Spike in, out and then down the back of her throat.

“ _Oh._ Bloody hell.”

She was out of practice and it still made her eyes water, but it was fun, Buffy decided, to make Spike physically lose control. His legs trembled either side of hers; his torso curled in towards the pleasure she was giving him. One hand thudded against the wall behind her – the other ghosted around her shoulder, upper back and hairline, like he didn’t want to be forcing her onto him but had no idea how not to touch her.

“Oh,” Spike repeated again, the sound of it hitching in his throat. “ _Oh…_ ”

Soon gagging wasn’t the issue, so much as oxygen. Pushing Spike back – where he stumbled – Buffy breathed furiously through her nose as she returned to her more standard BJ repertoire. Useless above her, Spike didn’t seem to trust himself to speak. “Fuck,” he whispered, his hand bunching in her hair.

Buffy rolled her eyes, figuring Spike would see it. She scraped her teeth on him.

“Fuck,” he breathed again, to make his point. As his shock seemed to fade, he was then shuffling closer, making soft sounds of contentment. It sounded like he was in tonight for the romance, but Buffy didn’t much want that this time, because she knew what it meant. She slurped, trying to make her point.

Of course, you couldn’t just leave Spike to enjoy something. His fingers wandered, trailing around her scalp while Buffy tried to figure out what was making him shiver, this time. Then he found her ponytail and began tickling her with it, stroking her neck and under her jaw.

The silliness of it all, when he caught a tickly spot, and the proof that Spike had caught her mood and understood her, was definitely watching her… It made Buffy blush more than the part where her tongue dove into foreskin, where she sucked saliva so she could get him as wet as he liked.

“You’re amazing at this,” he whispered, like it was a secret, leaning low. Like she was… “You know that, right? You…”

As he trailed off, Buffy kept working and Spike bent himself nearly double. In a moment of weakness, Buffy let his hips pull back, so he could make his trip to kiss the back of her head, stroke her hair.

Buffy kissed him back, right on his cockhead, her mouth trembling and inexpert for a moment. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and took him in again, refusing to be as emotional as she’d been the night before.

In the end, for the most part, this moment with Spike was quick and familiar. Buffy took him all the way in one last time, because it made her shiver when he shuddered – but when he let go he was a gentleman. Supporting her head with his hand, a thumb rubbing behind her ear, he somehow managed to shoot far enough back that there wasn’t too much mess and far enough forward that she didn’t have to take all the splooge.

“All right, all right,” Spike surrendered as she set him free, slumping into her lap. _Oof._ Buffy was right on the edge of the bed, so he nearly slid down to the floor as he kissed her. Of course he did it anyway, fingers underneath her chin so she was looking up. Pretty soon the area around both their mouths was sticky.

 _This is why God invented Walmart shirts,_ Buffy thought as she grabbed the hem of her own. She shoved her other hand into Spike’s hair to hold him while she cleaned his face, then pulled the shirt higher to wipe her own mouth.

“You gonna tell me what that was in aid of?” Spike asked as Buffy pulled the chiffon layery-thing the rest of the way off.

She just looked at him, dropping the shirt past his shoulder and then glancing down between their naked chests. Maybe her breasts were a distraction, but she thought they were OK. “That’s a question now?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Spike agreed, shoving forward so his knees were properly on the bed and taking her by the waist. “I don’t sodding care.”

Buffy snorted and then outright laughed as Spike tilted them sideways, landing on his back and pulling her on top of him into the gold, direct glow of the lamp. She squashed right up close and kissed him, getting as many fingers into his hair as she could fit. Running hands up her ribs and then down to heave her by the ass, Spike twined his socky feet around hers.

It was good, Buffy decided, reliving her best moves with Spike’s tongue this time. Of course, he had designs of his own, running his big toes into the arches of her feet until she was kicking and bucking at him.

Spike’s pillow was at that end of the bed, but it wasn’t for long, slipping and then flying off somewhere to the side of them. When it went, Buffy pouted, pulling back from Spike’s face. There was a fizzle in her feet that ran right up the inside of her legs, and it felt like a punishment. “Can a girl not suck a guy off anymore,” she asked while he looked at her, “without everyone assuming she has some ulterior motive?”

Spike sighed, like she’d caught him. “Are we going to talk about last night?” he asked, fond exasperation on his face.

The tone was light – all of everything around them was achingly light. And yet Buffy could feel the burn of the question somewhere between her heart and her stomach.

She pulled back slightly, not sure what to say. It wasn’t a change in subject, really, but…

Letting her go, Spike sat them both up a little. He ran two fingers down the centre line of her chest and there was determination in the set of his knuckles, no matter that his dick was semi-soft underneath her. “I need to talk to you,” he pressed.

“Well, I’m right here,” Buffy answered easily, keeping her cool even as her heart swelled and pitched like a microwaved marshmallow.

Naturally, even when Spike seemed pretty calm, he wasn’t. He looked at her, urgency in his eyes. “You are, aren’t you?” he asked, a little desperately. A moment more and then he seemed to realise it. “You are,” he repeated, like he was in love with her and it hurt. “What are you… What are you doing here?”

Buffy narrowed her eyes, staring him down with her weight on her hands and her back arched like a stripper. Spike didn’t let up the challenge, just tucked his trailing fingers into the front of her jeans.

OK, Buffy knew she should have realised; obviously she should have. One night with Spike and he was going to nest; he was going to think about what everything meant. He was a futureholic, or something else that tied up all the parts where he was adaptable and determined and a worrier and a killer improviser.

OK, goddammit, this was why Buffy loved him, because when she broke down he would kick her out of bed and make her get on with her life. Then when she was fooling around, when it was necessary, he would come gunning for her and make her face it, look at her like this.

It wasn’t like Buffy even wanted to excuse herself. She just… She had no idea who she’d be tomorrow, so how was it fair to talk about things today? It wasn’t over yet. It couldn’t be.

“I think you know what it’s about,” was what Buffy said in the end, uncomfortably, rolling over to his side. “Everybody does.” _That_ part at least was true.

“And yet I’m not one for the rumour mill,” Spike drawled, turning on his elbow to look at her. “It’s prone to get things confused.”

With her eyes squeezed shut, Buffy didn’t know what to say. She just wanted him to love her again, not run down his hopes like this, when they weren’t wrong – they _weren’t_. She just couldn’t say it and make it true when there was so much at risk like there was. “Please, Spike,” she whispered. The silence hung. “Please…” she managed to continue. “Will you ask me again after this is over?” she couldn’t look at him when she asked for this, not for something so unfair. “Will you do that for me?”

His fingers trailed through her hair. Half of it was stuck on the sweat of her temples; half her ponytail was stubbornly intact. Naked from the waist up, Buffy shivered, feeling small and mostly like she was made of bones.

As he twirled one lock from her forehead, Spike tweaked the hair until Buffy opened her eyes. “You live in a world of fear, Summers,” was what he said, like it was a serious fault.

Smiling, Buffy touched her fingers to his cheek and tried to let him know how she felt. At least while she still had the opportunity.

.


	15. bodies V

\-- _back then_ \--

“OK,” Buffy said at the end of the next day’s training.

It was cloudy and the girls looked exhausted. Of course, this wasn’t surprising since they’d been doing circuits, but it took Buffy a little by surprise nonetheless. With everything going on with Spike, she’d needed to work off some frustration, so she’d mostly been concentrating on burning herself out. Now was just moment when she realised that edge was never gonna blunt down.

It shouldn’t have been necessary, really. She’d been fine when she’d gone to bed, then fine again when she’d got up that morning. It was something about coming out into the afternoon sun, greeting the Potentials the way she’d greeted them yesterday. It all got her thinking about what had come afterwards, and their empty, unprepared faces bit at something inside her. It was the same place Spike’s tender hands both bit at her.

And it was frustrating, for real. It still was, even after the two-hour workout today. “I think we can call that a wrap,” Buffy said anyway, looking around at the Potential’s wiped expressions. Molly in particular looked a little green, leaning on Vi’s shoulder.

Maybe they should have finished half an hour ago. 

And yet – before they all trooped inside, Kennedy took the opportunity to raise her hand. She didn’t seem so worn out.

“Yes?” Buffy said, half-remembering that she’d promised the girl something the day before. Before the groping with Spike.

“You said…” Kennedy began, like she’d been anticipating this all day. Before she finished, though, she looked around, as though she was trying to be cool. “You know,” she changed approach, sounding almost bored, “the demo?”

“Oh, right,” Buffy said as it came back to her.

Kennedy wanted to try and hit her? Fine by her…

Stepping back from the group, Buffy made space for Kennedy to step forwards. A few of the girls groaned, but none of them left, just turned to watch. At least they had discipline.

It was really was a little gloomier today. Travers and Althanea were inside, and the weather was one of the few reasons the circuits hadn’t been completely irresponsible. Nonetheless, it didn’t put Buffy in the mood for teaching. Now she’d come up with this lesson, she was happy to repeat it: she’d skip the hit and talk about what Kennedy should do, but she was also hoping Kennedy might get the lesson about challenging her authority.

“So; let’s –” _Go._ Obviously, Kennedy came at her before Buffy asked her to. She avoided the punch anyway, easily. “And so you see,” she began the words to explain how she’d known what was coming.

The thing was, of all of them Kennedy had been trained pretty well, so she easily moved on to the next step in the dance and came at Buffy again.

“Oh.” Naturally, Buffy avoided the hit with a handy duck, but the blow had come a little faster than she’d been expecting. Was this really what they were going to be doing today?

When the next attack came, it took a lot of restraint for Buffy to not fight back. She was in a bad mood. She wasn’t getting any, _unlike_ Kennedy. The thing was, she didn’t actually want to hurt any of these girls, no matter how many lessons they needed to learn. 

“Seriously,” Buffy said, trying to work in a few defensive moves, in the face of Kennedy’s grim determination. She put her leg out in the hope that the girl would trip herself up on it, but fifteen years at the Watcher’s Council didn’t actually mean defeat by an opponent who wasn’t fighting back. “Do you have a point that you’re making here?” Buffy asked, annoyed.

Kennedy just came at her, again and again, not breaking her concentration or her flow. Part of Buffy was a little impressed, but she was also trying to work out how she’d explain to Willow that her girlfriend had a broken rib.

Thankfully, the other Potentials soon had had enough of this as well. On the edge of Buffy’s awareness, they were shouting at their friend to stop.

“Come on, Ken!” one of them complained. Buffy wasn’t sure who.

“You don’t have to prove anything!” another cried out. It might have been Vi.

Molly groaned, like she really did want to throw up.

“You’re not gonna hit her.” That was Rona.

Eventually, of course, Kennedy gave up. But it wasn’t without a wounded cry of frustration, which haunted Buffy for the last few steps she was turning away. “Would it be so hard?” Kennedy shouted. When Buffy turned back, the girl had tears in her eyes.

“So hard to do _what?_ ” Buffy shouted back, just as loud. Her heart was racing, and her bad mood was worse.

Kennedy set her jaw, and her fury looked hard inside her. “Would it be so hard,” she asked again, “to teach us what it feels like not to be _weak?_ ” She looked at Buffy like it was a curse, the power that she had. “All this stuff is useless,” she continued, throwing a hand around at the work-out kit on the lawn. “You want to give us something useful? Show us what it feels like to beat you.”

She didn’t know what she was asking. Looking at Kennedy and her weak stance on the lawn, the sort of stance Buffy had to school herself into when she was standing in the real world, Buffy knew that Kennedy couldn’t know what she was asking for.

All the same, Buffy really wasn’t in a mood to take it. “You wanna hit me?” she demanded, stalking right back up into the girl’s space. “Hit me,” she said, holding her arms out wide. “Go on. See if it makes you feel _better_.”

For a moment, Kennedy looked at her. Her eyes were wet. Then, with a snarl of frustration, she balled up her fist and punched Buffy straight in her stomach.

Buffy took it, the blow and the pain, the way she’d taken a hundred thousand hits before. Staring Kennedy down, she asked her again, “How d’you feel?”

Right then, as Kennedy looked away, Buffy saw it: the fear that all the Potentials had of her. It was right there in Kennedy’s scowl. All of it made sense now, Buffy figured – every piece. It wasn’t about them and their own pain, not really. It was the Slayer’s way to be better than anything else alive. They wouldn’t be happy about their own power until she fell at their feet.

None of them realised the truly terrifying part, of course. She was almost willing to do it.

“Buffy!” Lydia was calling over to her, looking perplexed with Nigel by her side. Buffy waved them all off as she charged inside.

* * *

There was a crowd in the kitchen by the time Buffy had taken a shower, and people kept talking to her. Anya, mostly, was going on about something, but it didn’t matter because Buffy was hungry. She ate half a bag of Cheetos and a full plate of dinner, in love with the full-blooded risotto and sick of being bound in her body’s self-denial.

Spike came upstairs for blood and they flirted by the microwave. Mostly, Buffy wasn’t sure what he was saying because she was too occupied staring at his mouth. He caught her, started acting jumpy, but in the end it wasn’t possible to resolve the situation before Giles was calling on her to look at patrolling routes. Because, obviously, one day they would actually take the girls on patrol.

She told Spike, “Later,” because she wanted him to know. He looked at her like he didn’t believe it.

In the end, when Buffy was done arguing with Giles about whether Gentle Pines was still an active cemetery, she had indigestion. Her Watcher left for Xander’s apartment, because he liked to alternate when he was here, keep an eye on things like the nosy boss of them he was. After that, the indigestion resolved into a straight-out energy slump, and she was sat in the dining room with her elbow on the table and her face resting on her fist, thinking about being hit.

That was where Willow found her. Buffy had almost forgotten she had friends who existed, so it was almost difficult to know what to say. Looking at Willow’s face was like looking into the past seven years.

She hovered in the doorway when Buffy looked up, an uncertain smile on her face and a steaming floral mug in her hands. “Oh, hey,” she said, like this had been an accident. “You want coffee? I just made some.”

You had to be fair to her. If there was one thing that sounded good right then, it was coffee. “Sure,” Buffy replied, easing herself to her feet. God, _coffee_.

“Oh, you don’t have to move,” Willow said quickly, stepping a step forward. “Take this,” she added, holding out her own mug. “I’ll get another.”

Buffy took the mug, thanking her. “I’m gonna go sit on the couch, though,” she explained, nodding to the living room. “Wooden chairs make this Buffy’s bones go creaky.” Case in point, there was a hink in her lower back already.

“OK,” Willow agreed, accepting the invitation a little too eagerly for someone who didn’t have anything to say.

Sure enough, even as Willow got her own coffee and came to sit opposite Buffy on the couch, her question was to the point. “So,” she asked, “how was training today?”

Buffy examined the look on her friend’s face. She almost sighed – of course this was going to be about training, because everything was in the end, wasn’t it? “Fine,” she said anyway, with a shrug. Buffy didn’t like taking bait. “How was your afternoon?”

“Good,” Willow replied eagerly. “Good.” She took a sip of her coffee and swallowed. After another moment’s pause, then, she glanced away and tried to sound casual. “There was something I wanted to ask you about, actually, ‘cause Lydia said something and then…” She stopped, waited, breathed and asked straight out, “What happened with Kennedy?”

As their eyes met, Buffy wondered what Willow already knew. It wasn’t a thing, was it? She didn’t want to make it a thing. “Can’t you ask her?” she tried, the sigh half escaping her.

“I did,” Willow replied, sounding frustrated. “She said you sparred,” she added, like she didn’t believe that at all. “But I don’t…”

All Buffy was left looking at then was a frown. She sipped her coffee, but didn’t interrupt.

“I don’t know, you know?” Willow said, glancing Buffy’s way. “We have all these good things going on, but then she gets mad, and then I feel like I’m stuck in the middle, and I just…” She shook her head.

Even as she was sitting there, curled up on the couch like a girlfiend, with a coffee and a crazy day, Buffy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have any relationship advice worth keeping and Spike let her get away with murder, including that time when he did. “You shouldn’t feel stuck in the middle,” she tried all the same, because that part at least was about her. Willow glanced up. “I’m not here to get in your way.”

“But you’re my friend,” then Willow replied, smiling like it couldn’t be helped. “And,” she added, more seriously, “you’re in charge of us.”

That made Buffy laugh, for reasons she didn’t want to think about. She held out her coffee so it wouldn’t spill, adjusting her legs. “But, Will,” she said, “you hate authority figures.”

“Nuh-uh!” Willow refused, distracted for a moment. It was a good look on her. “Teacher’s pet since 1981 – and proud of it!”

“OK, fine,” Buffy accepted, rolling her eyes. “You love them and resent them.” Neither of them needed to bring up the reason The Magic Box had seen a turnover of approximately zero dollars this last quarter – and the one before that.

“That’s…” Willow scowled, comically. “That’s not what we’re talking about, OK, missy? I just…” In seconds, the distraction was over again. “I wanna know if it’s all gonna be worth it, you know?”

Buffy did know. Also, she thought as she slurped some more coffee, she missed having jokes. There was never enough time. “It’s gonna be _fine_ ,” she said eventually, putting as much belief into the words as possible. It had to be fine. She tried to figure out if there was doubt in Willow’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

More than anything, Willow looked shifty. She dodged the question, changing the subject. “I never asked you if you were OK,” she said, with jitters. “After Spike and the…” she waved a finger at her own neck; Buffy was wearing a sweater, so you couldn’t see her scabs. “I should’ve asked days ago, but I’m such a…”

“Will,” Buffy interrupted, frowning, because it didn’t matter.

“I so wanted this to be my second chance,” Willow continued, sounding a little scattered. She was still looking down. “I wanted to come back to Sunnydale and make it work, with you guys and with magic, and… Here you guys are, you and – and Spike and Xander and Anya and I’m… I’m all left behind again.”

“You’re not…” Buffy began.

Willow looked up. “I _know_ I’m letting you down,” she said like it was true, “with the spells and stuff – and Ken says I shouldn’t care, but I do. And she won’t _understand_ , which is this whole other…”

“Will, just breathe, OK?” Buffy said firmly, because sometimes she was in charge of them.

Looking guilty, Willow glanced back her way. She held her mug close to her mouth, almost as if to protect her, and it was all ridiculous because Buffy _knew_ she was strong. Maybe it was something about Althanea being here; maybe it was something else, but it didn’t really make too much sense. Where was all this stuff coming from?

“I don’t want to put it all on you,” was what Willow said, after a moment. Her expression was pleading, like it was Buffy’s job not to let her. “I know we all…”

“It’s fine,” Buffy replied, resolutely. She smiled, the coffee cup warm in her hands. She rested it on her knees. If this was what this was about, in the end, then it really was all fine. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You shouldn’t have to take it, Buffy,” Willow said, like the concern had been riding her for weeks. “Not from all of us. Nobody’s strong enough to do that,” she insisted. “Not even you.”

“Really, it’s not a thing,” Buffy repeated herself. At the end of it all she was serious. Even that someone acknowledged what it meant, that was what made it worthwhile. And that was enough. It was. “I don’t have to be.”

\-- _the next time_ \--

When the First Slayer wanted her to, Buffy could fall asleep in an instant. Tonight it didn’t take long. She and Spike had barely got settled, after she’d recovered the lost pillow and Spike had dug out their new fuzzy blanket. He was still all noodly from his blow job, so Buffy had snuggled in close. Her nose itched once; she rolled over twice, to her back and then to make Spike spoon her – and Sineya was there, sat against the wall opposite the bed like a perve.

“Uh, excuse me,” Buffy addressed her, looking down to check there were arms in the way of her boobs. Just about, from what she could see, though Spike’s had her all pushed up and cleavagey. “Kind of semi-naked here.”

“It’s time,” the Slayer said gruffly, shaking her dreads.

And it was.

“What do you mean, it’s time?” This was a dream, though, so somehow Buffy didn’t know even as she did exactly. Somewhere other than the chest that currently looked quite sexy, her heart sank. She’d thought there would be more opportunities, more chances, more… “Time for what?” her dream self asked, naïvely.

“It’s time,” the Slayer would only repeat, her eyes locked on Buffy’s. Realisation crept between worlds.

 _No,_ all of her thought, looking back to Spike where he was sleeping, solid behind her. He wouldn’t wake up – of course he wouldn’t. _No,_ she thought again, even though she knew it was time to go. His hold was weak around her. When she let go of his arm Buffy knew the limb would drop away, leaving her exposed.

She was ready to do this for him, of course, for all of them. She had been since the night before.

That moment would have been the end of it, Buffy was certain, but as she looked back to the basement she remembered the other thing.

The First Slayer was there still, waiting.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” Buffy told her hesitantly, before she lost the opportunity to say that too. “About what happened to you,” she clarified, meeting Sineya’s eyes. The girl looked confused. “They had no right, those men,” Buffy explained. “To take you and make you suffer for them.”

That was the thing, wasn’t it? Because Buffy really was sorry. The calling of the Slayer, it was one of sacrifice and self-denial. She had made her peace with that, come to embrace it as something she’d chosen. The only thing that had been forced upon her, in the end, were superpowers and a kickass metabolism. Now it was just time to gain a couple more.

Sineya, though, with her white paint and her rage, she was the very first one. She had been chosen into this life in a way that was all the more brutal and all the more unbearable.

“There are worse things,” the Slayer said back, slowly, carefully, nonetheless. Buffy listened, surprised. “There are worse things than suffering.”

It was the same thing Buffy herself had been saying for weeks, yet the gulf between them seemed much greater than the width of the basement floor. The Slayer was crouching the dark, the way she always crouched in the dark – on her own. Buffy, on the other hand, was lying in bed with Spike’s arm and a blanket around her. The cushions Spike had found to bulk out the mattress were thin and lumpy, but they were better than the concrete.

She didn’t really get it, but eventually Buffy took Sineya’s point and nodded, with respect.

“You know what’s to come,” the First Slayer finished.

And when she woke up, Buffy did.

* * *

It seemed fitting, somehow, to wear the nightgown again, from the night before. Slipped from Spike’s arms tonight, Buffy found it hidden in a box of his stuff, right at the bottom as though he didn’t want anyone to see it, including either of them. Of course, it was freshly laundered, because Spike didn’t leave anything unlaundered these days, so when Buffy held it to her nose it smelled of lilies and linen and ozone.

Where she was holding it, the hanging folds of white kept tickling at her breasts, so Buffy stood up and pulled the thing over her head. It didn’t itch quite so much this time. Carefully, she redid all the buttons, adjusting so that every seam was aligned with her body – then she did the bow at the back.

With her loose hair and ponytail freed from the collar of the dress, Buffy scraped fingers around her face and brought all that back into order too. All her loose hair was yanked back into the band; the debauched kink her pony had taken to one side was straightened to sit aligned with her spine and with her nose where follicles pulled at her forehead.

At last she tied the collar. Still in jeans and socks, it was easy for Buffy to then tear the skirt of the nightdress from a little below the bodice. It left her virginal once more, with a gathered and flaring top, then at least a practical lower half. She’d grab her boots on the way out – her jacket to hide the torn hem – but this part of the outfit would at least remind her of the mission, as she came undone once more.

It would have surprised her a lot if Spike hadn’t had some notepaper and a pen among his things, but tonight there were no surprises. The note Buffy wrote wasn’t long.

Looking at it when she was finished, Buffy wondered if there were more words to say, but she didn’t say them. Tearing the note from where it was bound, she threw the brown leather notebook back amongst Spike’s stuff and crossed the short distance back to the bed.

“Hey,” she whispered, dropping to her knees by the bedside. Spike was out for the count, nestled in all the soft things he had found for them – face down, his nose was smooshed into the pillow and one hand was spread on the sheet here Buffy had lain moments before. “Spike, it’s me,” she whispered again, running fingers through his hair, along the paths she’d made earlier. “You’ve gotta wake up – just for a minute.”

He mumbled something that made no sense, but his searching hand moved from the bed to rest on her wrist. Buffy leaned in as he rolled over, cradling his face now and kissing him for a final time, smooshing his nose where it was supposed to be smooshed against hers. It was clear that Spike wasn’t entirely awake – the grip he had on her was weak; his mouth against hers was slightly too soft and slightly too slow – but Buffy hoped at least that he was there in the moment with her.

She checked. “Say my name,” she whispered, looking into Spike’s closed eyes.

He was all of inches away. “Buffy,” he came back with, barely moving his lips.

“Spike,” Buffy addressed him, glad that he couldn’t see her face. She swallowed as he smiled. “I’m sorry it’s so soon.” This was… This was really hard. It wasn’t supposed to be so soon.

“Buffy?” Spike mumbled again, frowning slightly.

It took a second to find her strength, then – “Tell me you love me?”

Caught up in this dream they were sharing, Spike sighed, a rush of air running through him and out through his nose, like frustration. Nonetheless he murmured back, his hand warm on her elbow, “I love you.” _You stupid cow._

The words pricked Buffy’s eyes with tears. _Thank you._

There was a smirk on Spike’s lips, almost like he’d heard. Almost like he knew. Yet he was drifting off again – that was clear. His hold on her began to weaken.

“One day,” Buffy promised, smiling back no matter what it meant. Spike’s hold on her was practically gone. It wasn’t clear how much of her he could hear or what he would remember. Even she almost couldn’t hear her own words. Yet she promised him anyway, “I’ll tell you.”

As she said it, Buffy became sure Spike had gone. It didn’t matter anymore, though, so she pressed one last for-the-last-time kiss to the side of his nose and let him find his rest.

It took a moment, but then Buffy was pulling back, taking Spike’s hand between the two of hers to press the note into his palm and curl his fingers around it into a fist. That fist she tucked close to his body, right up near his chin and his chest and his other shoulder, near the comfort of his pillow.

It would come down during the night, but all the same Buffy pulled the blanket up, hiding Spike’s torso from view. She was hoping he would wake before morning – the whole plan rested on him waking before morning – and she wanted the first thing for him to notice to be what she’d done for him.

When the moment came to regain her feet, Buffy hesitated for real, not sure what she wanted the last thing to be that she would do or say. “Bye,” was what she said, but it wasn’t really enough. None of it was.

She left to find the dragon.

\-- _then_ \--

When Buffy looked at herself in the mirror, what she saw was a lonely warrior, too much in control and a threat to everyone around her. They said they put things on her, demanded things from her, but it wasn’t really true. This person, she had nothing to give. She was too well protected.

That was how Buffy wanted to appear, for the most part. It allowed her to do her job, as Spike would say. It allowed her to be the Slayer. The problem was, written in the Slayer was her every memory of heartache, every shield and layer of leather and bronze she had spun around herself to free her from the mortal requirements of pain.

Dragging the make-up wipe from her box on the dressing table, Buffy tried to see herself differently. She tried to imagine what it would mean to be someone who could be defeated, taken in battle. Taken wherever. She dragged the white, stinging wipe of alcohol and oil across her face, so that with it every stain of bronzer, pink-honey slip of lip gloss and foundation smoothed away from her face. The black stains on her eyes, she scrubbed them away, more dark black-gold shadow and mascara she had never used to put on so thickly.

It was there in her hand soon after, all her hopes for herself. Her fingers shook as she threw the wipe in the waste basket.

Back to her mission, then, Buffy examined herself again. It was a little better, really, but she was still all too much metal. If there was anything anyone needed from her, it wasn’t sharpness. Willow hadn’t wanted sharpness, and Spike…

Bringing her hands to her ears, Buffy began the task her earrings from their lobes, every one. When she was fifteen, she figured she’d get a piercing for every big battle she survived, to remind her – but after six months there had already been too many for her to stay fashionable. She laid – what was it? Ten? – earrings down on the table, setting them in pairs like she had her shuriken back when the Magic Box had had its training room. Her ears felt light when she was done, the holes in them vulnerable.

It didn’t help when Buffy pulled her hair down, unbraiding every plait until it hung with no more style than how it was cut. These days, that wasn’t so much, at least when she swept her bangs to the side.

It would be easy, Buffy figured, to keep going like she’d been going, to win out this fight the way she’d won out every other. Maybe she still would. This thing with Spike, though; this thing with the girls; this thing with Willow and with the Watchers and with Giles – she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it anymore. Not this way.

There wasn’t anything she could do, she decided, about the set of her mouth. All of this, the external stuff, it was what Buffy did to herself every day. The underneath parts of her with full of everything that had been done. As she stood up, she thought she could feel it, every scar that made her something less than perfectly good, perfectly innocent in the battle against evil she somehow still found herself fighting.

Yet, as she slipped out of her clothes, there was a body underneath her after all. It was short like it always had been, thin not quite like it ever really was. If you believed her mother’s romance novels, there wasn’t much to tell the world she was a woman. Her chest was flatter than it had been with her a teenager; her waist didn’t do so much to divert from the path between her ribs and her hips. Without her clothes, she had the body of a gymnast. One of the child ones. Without her underwear, she looked older, but still like she was no good for anything adult.

This was what made it weird, Buffy thought, that she’d ever been a sexual aggressor. She didn’t look like any of the hot chicks in the movies. She didn’t look like any of the warrior chicks either. She figured she could be the victim quite happily, like the ditzy cheerleader or…

Rooting through her wardrobe, Buffy tried to find something that made sense. There wasn’t anything. There never was. She moved over to her drawers, feeling the night air on her skin and the hanging lengths of her hair around her face as the wood juddered in its runs.

Then, right at the back of the drawer of sweaters she never wore, Buffy found it. An old, maybe fifteenth – maybe sixteenth birthday present from her Aunt Darlene.

Now, Aunt Darlene had never had any teenage children, so she’d never quite figured how sixteen wasn’t just four years gone from twelve. Also probably because that was about the time she’d refused to shut up about _Pride and Prejudice_ on A &E, she’d figured what Buffy had really wanted for her birthday was a full-length empire-line nightie, with lace around the top of the arms and a bow at the collar. In white.

Needless to say, it had never been worn. By sixteen, Buffy had had two rules for dresses like this. Either they had to show off her legs, pretty much going short enough that she had to take shallow steps on stairways so as not to show off her crotch – not that she really minded the odd flash; it was better than looking like a pre-schooler – or they had to come down her chest far enough that anyone looking would be too embarrassed to notice she was still a double-A.

She’d dressed as a slut, basically, but kept everyone at arms’ length. These days, of course, it was all about the comfy slacks and necking. Yet, nonetheless, Buffy thought she played harder to get. With emphasis on the difficult.

What would it look like, Buffy wondered, to make herself the girl she’d never been? One of those cry-babies from a novel? A vampire novel?

Pulling the nightdress from the drawer, Buffy walked back to her full-length mirror. She looked at herself with the belief, if nothing else, that she had banished every ounce of self-loathing, so it was all fairly easy to get dressed. OK, it was difficult to find her way through every fold of white, so for a moment too long she was lost looking at herself, the fat on the inside of her legs. Still, she found her way eventually.

Then, however, she was dressed as a meringue. The gown was on her shoulders, her head free from its neck, and parts were caught on her chest so it was still cutting just above her knees. It looked – awful.

With an irrational burst of disgust and that incandescent rage only a bad outfit could bring, Buffy straightened the dress, dragging the band of the bodice tight across the pebbled nipples of her breasts. She breathed heavily, her face red as she suppressed the urge to destroy herself, yanking on seams and looking away from the mirror.

There was a bow at the back she should have undone, Buffy realised, a ribbon which ran through corset lacing. There were more bows than she’d realised: the one at the collar, woven into lace and scalloping ruffles; this corset bow at the back – and then two at the tops of her thighs, marking the crease where her legs turned into crotch and guarding pleats of material in case she didn’t think there was enough.

Ruffles of lace and broderie anglaise ran in vertical lines up and down the bodice, the seams of them scratching at her. There were buttons up the front, like there were up the back, and an invisible keyhole about three inches long that gave the collar bow something to keep together. She turned around and Buffy found yet another tie at the back, opening up yet another pleat of white material just underneath her ass-crack.

Maybe it had always been too small, but otherwise Buffy’s ribcage had definitely filled out in the last seven years. She looked disgusting; she looked…

She was a fetish. There were no other words for it. She bore no resemblance to the girl who had walked into this room ten minutes ago and as she calmed down, became used to the nightdress’s ungrateful approach to her chest, she realised it didn’t actually make her look unfeminine.

Good god, Buffy realised, in a flash of recognition. She looked like Drusilla after Prague.

She hated her herself like this, Buffy decided as she looked back into the mirror. She looked ready to be seduced, desperate for any glimpse of smut. It was uncanny and went against everything she was. So it had been with Dru, of course.

_Needs must when the devil drives._

That was the thing, wasn’t it? She wanted the devil and she definitely wanted some driving. Maybe a few bows were a small price to pay, to lose herself.

.


	16. bodies VI

  


_You have until morning to get everyone out of town.  
Sunnydale’s not gonna make it, so you have to get out.  
I’m telling you – get out.  Now._

  
The first thing Spike noticed, when he woke up, was that there was a blanket covering his shoulders. It was an odd sensation to wake up to, not his usual. It was nice. Cosy. The second thing he noticed was that Buffy wasn’t there.

This realisation was less cosy. As he looked around the basement, Spike could make out signs of her leaving: his stuff had been raided, it looked like, with various bits and bobs tossed haphazardly between piles. Some of them teetered; some of them were far too short. Buffy’s top remained discarded by the bed, like a beige and cream chiffon bloodstain on the cement floor. Another rag was over by his stuff, a suspicious round ring of crumpled, sprawling white.

There was also, Spike realised, a note in his hand. He read it. When he’d finished, he read it again. On his face, the memory returned of a slow, wet kiss; fingers clenching at his temple; his nose pressed against flesh on its bridge and its side; the air on the rest of him hot and thrumming with tension.

Again, Spike read the note. He felt sick. He hadn’t been sick, of course, in over a century; hadn’t vomited in over a hundred years – but right now he felt like there was a first time for everything.

 _I love you,_ he’d said, like a soggy-palmed, naïve fool.

Shaking, Spike scrambled out of bed. His cock and his balls hung freely from his jeans, which were slipped and still slipping down his arse. Managing himself, he shoved everything back where it was supposed to be and nabbed a clean t-shirt from the pile that had been dumped out of his clothes box. His duster was on his arm and his boots were held in his fingers as he launched himself up the stairs, caught in a fit of adrenaline.

 _“Wake up!”_ he bellowed as he left the basement, relieved at least that the night was yet thick and heavy beyond the windows. _“Everybody wake **up**!”_

He charged around the ground floor of the house, slamming doors and shouting. He fell into the hallway and baulked when the moment it came to climb the stairs, staring up for a moment and seeing nothing but a never-ceasing tunnel towards darkness. The stairs were ridges on the floor like the deadly rocks of a waterfall; the pale plaster slanted sideways, underneath him.

It was a weird time for anything like that to happen, but Spike couldn’t do it, couldn’t go up there, so he continued on his path, too much oxygen roaring into his lungs and into blood that didn’t need it, filling his end with a pounding sense of emptiness.

_“God damn you all, where are you? We have to get up!”_

He found himself back in the kitchen, his vision filled with the sink and its window. The drainer on the side was empty, because he’d emptied it hours before. He remembered how Buffy had watched him, yet already that image of her felt like a ghost on his consciousness – something unreal compared to the moment he was living in now.

With the sound of no one else waking up, Spike was suddenly struck by the fear that he was in this house alone, with no one to help him and no one to find him. Dropping his things to the floor, he rushed towards the pile of dirty dishes. They were making time on the far side of the basin, free from the congealing water he knew was in the sink, soaking two nasty-looking roasting tins.

 _“Get up!”_ he bellowed again, as loudly as he could make his voice carry, before he swept an arm behind the plates and mugs and glasses and brought all of them crashing down onto the floor. The clamour was almighty, ringing and piercing into Spike’s ears, but it wasn’t enough and not everything broke.

Anything that looked too whole, Spike knew he had to pick that up, so he did, flinging anything still breakable at windows, at the walls, at the worktops. His voice was weakening. _“Get up!”_ he cried for the last time.

Oh, hell. He wanted nothing more than for this to be over. For this to be a dream. It had to be a dream.

“What in heaven’s name is going on? Spike, what is wrong with you?”

At the sound of the other voice, Spike spun around. It was Giles, standing in the doorway wearing pyjamas and no glasses. He slept on the sofa sometimes, Spike remembered. He must have stormed straight past him.

“It was you!” Spike shouted at the man, all his thoughts jumbling over themselves. “You and your _Watchers_ and your _plans_ … She’s gone!” he told Giles, brandishing Buffy’s note like a weapon in Giles’ face, halfway and then all the way back across the room. “She’s gone and she’s gonna bring down this town around our ears. _We have to get out!_ ”

“What…?” Giles trailed off as he took the note, then was silent as he held it far away from his eyes. He blanched as he read it.

“We have to get the witches,” Spike insisted, because it was clarifying, now, what Buffy had trusted him to do. “They need to put out a message. Wake everyone up – make them leave – tell them there’s a gas leak that’s been growing for years and – and a fire on Main; tell them the dam’s coming down.” A plan was forming in his head, a way for them to get through this, but he needed all the others; couldn’t do what Buffy wanted on his own.

It was a lesson from her, Spike was sure of it. Whatever happened tonight, she wouldn’t let them off the hook.

“We need transportation,” Spike’s brain rattled on, his eyes watching how the Watcher’s hands shook and Buffy’s notepaper trembled. “Get Harris on it; the Principal. All of us need to be gone from this place and we need to get _up_ , to get out, to…”

“It’s three-thirty in the morning,” Giles interrupted as Spike’s concentration guttered and vanished into tatters. By contrast, the steel around Giles’ eyes was as sharp as his cut-glass accent. “We have time. We have plenty of time.” Those eyes fell on Spike’s. “You know where she is, don’t you?”

Spike’s hands were trembling. He needed a cigarette. “I know,” he confirmed, because he did. If it was three-thirty, it was possible there was still time to stop this and make it all… “I can’t tell you where she is,” Spike told Giles, cutting into his own thoughts just as violently. “She’s trusting me to…” That was too big a thought; he shook his head. “It’s bad news and she is not fucking around.”

Again, Spike’s vision was swimming. What drew him out of it, unexpectedly, was the rough jolt of comfort as Giles’ hand crossed the space between them and grasped Spike by the shoulder, patted the bone again and let go.

“I won’t ask,” Giles said, as Spike looked back in surprise.

There was no time for waiting, though. Giles immediately turned away, and behind him Spike realised there was a crowd of everyone else, waiting anxiously in the hall.

“Everybody listen to me,” Giles began, his voice loud and clear and strong. “There is very little time.” The silence was a deafening hush that burned on the nerves of Spike’s ears. “There are vital phone calls I must make to the groups at Xander and Anya’s apartments.”

As Giles continued, Spike came closer, his footsteps crunching through rogue shards of glass and china.

“Spike will tell you what to do,” Giles then said, surprising him. Spike looked up and around at the sea of faces. “You will obey without question and we will all survive the night.”

None of them liked the sound of this. Chalmers had her eyebrow raised, looking speccy in her jimjams, so maybe there was someone on side. Nigel and Travers looked resigned, but the rest of them were nursing mutiny. Spike resented all three of those Watchers, for what they’d done, or else he wanted to. He wanted to hate someone – feel something – but it was all distorted and vague.

“That includes you, Kennedy,” was the last thing Giles left, before he vanished towards the phone. Spike’s eyes fell on her grumpy face.

Once upon a time, somewhere if not in this town, Spike had been one of the most wicked, tricky bastards to walk God’s green earth. He’d uncovered the Judge, got duLac deciphered and dug up a massive, fuck-off treasure trove which included the Gem of Amara.

As the initial mutiny died on the faces before him, his audience waiting for their cue, Spike remembered how and he remembered hard.

_You better make this worth it, love._

“Right!” he declared, that old well of cold, amoral certainty flooding through his veins. “Red; Althanea,” he began, finding their faces in the crowd. “I don’t care how you do it, but you need every citizen in this burgh up from their beddy-byes and out onto the highway. The rest of you, get dressed and get packed.”

\-- _before_ \--

“Is Buffy all right?”

There was a voice in Spike’s head, talking to him. It was Chalmers, he knew, just like it always was.

“Hello, Spike; are you in there?” She sounded annoyed. “Right, I’ll just talk to myself, then, won’t I?”

It was when she turned the tap on that Spike realised he wasn’t actually in any sort of dreamland. There was water gushing into a sink and he was standing in Buffy’s kitchen, staring like a goon after the empty door she’d gone off through to have a shower. One Council witch was bustling in and out of the backdoor with salt and pepper, while Lydia the Watcher was standing in front of the sink like a pissed-off housewife.

She’d got ballsy since she’d been in his head, Spike thought. It was almost a good look.

“What?” Spike asked the back of this Watcher, trying to remember the question. Oh yes, Buffy, his _raison de souffrir_ and most other French terms he cared to think of. “She’s fine,” he told Chalmers’ spinster bun, not caring if he sounded defensive. “Sometimes she gets… Like this.”

If he knew the reason, Spike thought he could be a far better man than he was. Naturally, a part of it was all to do with him, for weeping and sniffling all over her instead of getting on and fucking her the way she wanted, but there was something else going on. He knew it. It was why he couldn’t yet bring himself to…

“My goodness,” Althanea interrupted Spike’s thoughts, hands on her hips as she stared at the greasy counter and the pile of broken chicken carcasses. “That is something of a boneyard, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah, right,” Spike replied, distracting himself. There were other things to think on. “I was thinking about stock.”

\-- _now_ \--

It was minutes before dawn when the earth started to shake. Most of the roads had cleared, the chaos of the evacuation somehow resolving itself as the bottlenecks onto Route 101 gradually drip-fed the denizens of Sunnydale out into brighter pastures.

Principal Wood came by with a schoolbus, already half-full with the girls from Xander and Anya’s places – with Xander and Anya at the front, ready to disembark when the bus pulled up outside 1630.

The doors opened, and Spike wanted to ask. He wanted to know if they’d seen her. It was too risky, of course, to give away her plans to anyone who hadn’t already figured them out, so he didn’t. He knew it was the Hellmouth, though. It was always the Hellmouth. As the first trembles shook the earth underneath them, it was also clear that the first part had been successful.

“Right, you lot,” Spike told the crowd behind him. “On the bus with you.” He wondered if it was the first light of day he could see on the horizon, or else if it was Los Angeles. If it mattered. He’d never got his directions figured out in this town.

All of them were used to his commands now, so eager they were for someone to lead them. Lydia went first and then without question the Potentials were falling up the yellow bus’s stairs, half in order and half like the pack of scared schoolgirls they were. Nigel was stood by the door, nodding as they chattered their way past him; Spike just watched as they ran, grabbing one as she tripped before she fell, setting her right. She didn’t even look around.

Xander, of all people, was fighting the flow of girls, waiting impatiently at the top of the stairs as though he was the teacher ticking them off. He had to duck out of the way as Travers made his path up the aisle.

They should have had a roll call, Spike realised. Buffy would have had a roll call. As the earth trembled again, though, he took a step towards the house and he knew there was no one inside. He took a few more steps to be sure, but the ground shook and Dawn was calling from behind. “Spike! There’s no one in there!”

They would never know, he guessed. Not until it was too late. Such was the price of leadership.

Again, there was a tremor. Spike turned around and herded the last few up the bus steps. Of course, Dawn had a thousand questions on her face. Willow looked drawn from the magic she’d cast, but working through it. Kennedy was sucking a lemon, but she went with the rest of them and Spike hopped into the doorway with his axe and his bag that was mostly filled with stuff for Buffy.

The doors shut behind him, but he could only turn back to their windows, watching the house and trying to shake the feeling they had left someone behind. After all, he knew who it was and she really wasn’t there.

“Tell me this is all really, really bad timing,” Xander said behind him, refusing to take his seat like the rest of them. “This is an earthquake. A California trembler which just so happens to coincide with our need to get out of town and Buffy’s need to not be on this bus.”

“Sod off, Harris,” Spike replied as he let his stuff hang from his right hand, not in the mood for any of this.

The house was pulling away from them. Everything he had ever been in that house, every unwelcome visit, it was vanishing into the night and Spike didn’t know what to do with the realisation. He wanted to go back, to stop the bus and get off of it. He wanted to smoke one last fag under the tree out the front and shag Buffy on the back porch, that place they’d made their own long before the basement. Never marked.

Maybe it wasn’t right to want that, not when all the times they’d had there had been such tender moments, but they weren’t enough. He wanted more. None of his memories were enough.

_Buffy, love, why are you dressed as a cupcake?_

_Oh, William, I was sleeping, but I couldn’t…. I can’t stop thinking about you._

_… Really, now? Pray tell._

_I think, when you bit me… I think it’s done something to me._

They were at the end of Revello, and it was the last moment, Spike new. Feasibly the last moment among few if Principal Wood didn’t bloody step on it, now that the ground was rumbling rather than resting between its bouts of upset.

_I know all the rumours. I know you’ve had girls in France and Spain and Italy and I know I’m only… But the other night you – you said I was special._

She wasn’t a schemer, his Slayer. She thought on her feet. Spike knew as well as he could know that she wouldn’t have planned to abandon him when she did. Of course, he should have seen it coming anyway. It had been in her every touch that she’d been intending to go without him, whenever it was she went back to the Bronze.

The house was going, gone. Spike didn’t shed a tear, but it wasn’t until the bus turned out of Revello Drive that he realised he was leaning on the inside of the bus door, head on his fist and his face practically pressed up against the glass.

“Spike,” Xander repeated behind him, sounding annoyed. “What the hell is going on? Where’s Buffy?”

“She’s not here,” was all Spike would tell him. He banged his fist against the window, once, and turned to face the rest of the gang inside the bus. If the rising earthquake was telling them one thing, after all, it was that Buffy would not be getting on here with them, not until it was all over.

There were other problems to deal with right now, not least the fact that the sun was coming up and very soon he’d be stuck in a glass box without shelter.

“You know how to drive this thing?” he challenged the Principal, barging pointedly past Xander and chucking his gear on the seat behind the driver, axe on the floor where he could just about wedge it between seat legs.

Of course, Robin Wood chose this moment to take the high road, ignoring him while he checked his mirrors. _For what?_ Spike wanted to ask, but he refrained. The bus resolutely continued its trundle down the school route towards the town’s more major roads.

“Spike,” Xander was still yammering on.

“Look,” Spike tried his own pointless conversation again. He was certain now it was the sunrise they were driving towards. Wood’s face in the mirror was a mask of concentration. “I’m sure the accelerator’s capped or whatever, but will you put your foot down?” He tried to tell the man, “We ain’t got long.”

“Goddammit, Spike –”

That moment, the first real quake hit, throwing Spike around the pole he was holding and throwing Xander face-first into the gangway.

“Xander!” It was Anya yelling, her face appearing round the seats like a whackamole. One of the girls near the front started to cry.

Fury snapped through Spike the way it hadn’t in years. “Fucking _stay_ in your _seats_!” he shouted, waiting for the next shock before he scrambled to help one slightly addled Scooby upright.

So many times in the past few days, Spike had been angry. He’d felt the rage of a soulless demon, crawling up into his veins. Every time he realised how soft he’d become – how much anger there remained to feel. As he grabbed Xander and shoved him into Anya’s waiting arms, he wondered if there really was more violence still yet to find inside him, to rip him through from his chest to his knees.

“Spike,” then it was Dawn talking to him, from the bench across the aisle.

Looking up, Spike realised he was still in the gangway, holding onto the plastic knob on the corner of the seat in front of Xander and Anya’s bench. The bus lurched again, the sound of thunder outside, and Spike was thinking back to a ride in a Winnebago, wondering how long it would take for Harris to throw up this time.

On the other side of the bus, Dawn was rummaging through a lilac backpack, pulling out what was, then, an incongruously ratty-looking horse blanket. It was the sort of thing Spike had once kept stashed in a dozen places around Sunnydale, but with time and his bout of insanity he’d long since forgotten where they all were.

“I knew you’d forget,” she said once she had it free. She pulled her feet up from the floor to her chest, kicking her bag away and turning so she was sat against the window. “You always forget,” Dawn explained, holding out the blanket into the gap in front of the bench.

They were heading east. The window Dawn was sat against was south-facing. It was the second row, so there was the added cover of the front seat – which itself faced straight out towards the windscreen. With a bit of luck, that gap where Dawn’s feet should have been would be in shadow until the time they found other shelter.

“Cheers,” Spike said, not sure what else to say as he took the grunge-coloured fleece from Dawn’s hands. He tucked and shoved himself into the gap, remembering why he hated blankets as he got it ready to throw over his head with a split-second’s notice.

Before he could surrender again to his own thoughts, Dawn was asking him, “Is she gonna meet us?” The bus was bumping and lurching, but it was gradually picking up speed. There was no one else on the road; they didn’t need to brake. “Did she say where we should go find her after?”

“I don’t know, all right?” Spike replied, not seeing much of anything. It was cool and dark where he was sitting: if he shut his eyes he could almost imagine he was still underground. “She didn’t tell me.” It was easier to admit it, now they were moving. _She didn’t tell me._ “She just left, the way she always leaves.”

“OK,” Dawn replied, leaving it.

\-- _before_ \--

The stock was on, and Spike was out for a smoke. The witch Althanea was a nice enough old bird, but the looks she had in her eyes made a man want to wash his hands.

Of course, he’d half forgotten that the other two were out here. What he wouldn’t have given to have Dawn or one the Scoobies instead – people he could make sense of, rather than the head of the Council who had its mission to eradicate his kind. And some bloke from bloody _Harrow_.

They were talking between themselves in low voices, enjoying the dim California twilight while Spike’s fingers failed to lose their tremor. It wasn’t entirely clear if they’d noticed him come outside, but Spike didn’t particularly feel the need to announce his presence.

“She’s a concern,” Nigel was saying, as though he was used to passing judgement and did it without malice. “Highly skilled, clearly, and motivated for the task, but her respect for authority…”

“Yes,” Travers replied with just as level a voice, “but one might easily call that spirit.”

For a moment Spike froze, wondering if they were talking about Buffy. They couldn’t have known he was there, he decided, because they wouldn’t talk about her like this in front of him. At least, he assumed they wouldn’t. Not that it mattered, really: they had better not be talking about her like this. He’d find the strength to do them both in if they were.

“It’s not always a benefit for the bright ones to meet the Slayer,” Travers continued, at least confirming that they weren’t. Worryingly, it was a relief. “They need goals and her level is rather – unattainable.” Christ, that was almost a compliment. “Of course, Giles thinks otherwise…”

“Oh, of course Giles thinks otherwise,” Nigel interrupted. Spike smirked out into the gloom, not quite relaxed but a little better. “I’m sorry – but, frankly, sir, I’m fed up to the back teeth with both him and Mr. Wood.”

_Oh, really?_

“And what has the man done now?” Travers replied.

“Well,” was Nigel’s long-suffering response, “if he isn’t going on about the use of school equipment, he’s trying to lure me into conspiracies against our Slayer’s pet vampire. And I _told_ him, she’d have his head – but would he listen?”

That particular tirade brought Spike to a full pause, fag in his fingers and smoke in his throat. Wood was hoping to off him? Well, that was hardly a surprise. But the idea it would be Buffy who would save his wretched carcass? Seriously, Spike thought as he turned in their direction - sod that.

\-- _now_ \--

Spike had no idea where they were as time went on, but he damn well saw it when the great, holy flash of white flooded through the bus from behind. The main jet of it went over his head, thank God, but the indirect spill of it was enough to make his skin feel tight and hot and burnt. When he looked at his hands they were pink.

“What was that?” Dawn asked from above him, climbing up on her seat to address her question further around the bus, most likely to Willow who was only two rows away.

With a premonition Spike would later blame on her sister, Spike reached up and grabbed Dawn’s wrist – to pull her back into her seat. “Stay down!” he shouted, just in time for the worst crack of the earthquake yet, which brought screams from two stupid, useless Potentials and a loud crash as the head of a WALK/DON’T WALK sign smashed straight through their window.

The bus was veering round a corner. The sign appeared right where Dawn’s head had been, before falling away from the window to clank down the metal chassis of the bus as they escaped it What felt like a gale came rushing in through the hole in the window, along with the thousand gravel-like chunks of glass that were all over them both.

“Oh god, oh god,” Dawn was saying above the howl of the wind, looking at her hands and the glass she had on her. “What do I do? What do I do?”

“Tip them onto me, sweet, yeah?” Spike told her, watching to see if she was about to go into panic. “I’ve had worse.” Dawn looked at him, frightened as hell, but more than alert. “Tip them onto me,” he repeated, “and then stand up – careful, right? Go sit with Xander and Anya and tell me where the hell we are.”

The bus shuddered again, and Spike knew this was the beginning of the end. The light was a clue if nothing else, and they needed to be on the city limits. Christ knew what they would do if they weren’t, but they needed to be there.

Looking down at him, seriously, Dawn put her arms in front of her and shook the rain of glass gravel into Spike’s lap, where his blanket caught the most of it. Then she took hold of the back of the seat bench again, using her bag to scrub away the glass in front of her as she shuffled down and off of the edge.

 _Good girl,_ Spike thought to himself as she kept her head down, riding out every bump and lurch by leaning into the sprung cushions. Fuck him if she loved him; he loved her enough for the pair of them.

Anya was waiting to take her, yammering on as she squeezed up closer next to Xander. He was staring out of their window, looking greener than pondweed. Spike couldn’t see anything useful past him, only sky.

Thankfully, it seemed as though Dawn was happy to act as his eyes. “We’re nearly out of town,” she told him, her expression begging him to tell her that was right. “We’re on the highway, going past the strip mall.”

Spike nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was covered in glass, on a bus full of people who conceivably hated him, with raw sunshine glaring in through a hole above his head. On the other hand, it was possible they were going to make it through this, if the Principal, who definitely did hate him, he just kept on driving in a straight line.

* * *

The town swallowed itself. There was no other way to describe it – but that wasn’t to say that everything vanished, not nearly.

There was a sinkhole where the town had been, starting two hundred yards up the highway behind the bus. Odd things in odd places disappeared into what seemed like nowhere, with nothing but barren desert in their wake. For the most part, though, the surface infrastructure remained, riven and crumbled and broken, but present: roads marking out where the buildings hadn’t fallen over and the trees hadn’t been ripped up.

It took until well past midday, Hell making itself known on the horizon as the tremors gradually ceased. When Spike looked at it, from under his trusty blanket, he thought he could trace the way that they’d come. There was a path there, through the rubble, mostly down the highway where it wound its way downhill. He could get to the school. He could get to the centre.

Really, now that he was looking at the town, as the _Welcome to Sunnydale_ sign fell in, Spike felt so light in his chest that he thought he could make it anywhere.

Everyone was milling around, uncertain what they were waiting for and why they weren’t getting back on the bus. Everyone was hungry. At least the girls were, anyway. The Scoobies and the Watchers were having their own confabs, while Spike stood looking down the path, planning his route.

“I can’t quite believe she did it,” Spike overheard Travers saying. “I was sounding off that night; should have stayed in bed. I can’t believe it.”

“You couldn’t have known, sir,” Chalmers replied, all prim and proper again; either in shock or in closing ranks.

“But look at it!” Willow was already grieving with the others. “How could anyone survive what’s happened?”

“Don’t _say_ that!” Dawn was complaining right back.

Directly behind Spike, another voice spoke up. “Hey,” it said.

It was, of all bloody people, Andrew. Spike didn’t turn around. Honestly, he had forgotten the geek was even on the bus.

Eventually, Andrew’s sneakers appeared on Spike’s right, pointing cautiously to nowhere in the dust. Still beneath his blanket, Spike glanced up. “What?” he asked, annoyed to be distracted.

“Can you tell if she’s out there somewhere?” he asked. “You know, Buffy?” He asked it like he was trying to be sensitive to Spike’s feelings. “Is that something you guys can…?”

“This ain’t a bloody Harlequin,” Spike dismissed, looking back to the remains of Sunnydale. He suppressed that part of him that wished that wasn’t true. “Not your Anne Rice either.”

“But you’re gonna go after her anyway,” Andrew said, like he somehow understood.

This was ridiculous, Spike thought. He was standing there, talking to one of the saddest cases of humanity the world had ever witnessed, when he could be spending his time in the sun doing something much more useful with not so much risk to himself.

“Tell this lot to make camp for the day,” Spike said, making his decision. He turned back to the bus. “Send someone for supplies; the Principal, probably.”

Andrew trotted behind him, presumably taking mental notes.

Spike figured it was for the best. “Tell him to take this hunk of junk,” he continued, climbing up the bus steps to where his stuff was stowed. There was just enough darkness to get his army surplus rucksack thrown around his shoulders, stick his axe in his hands at the edge of the blanket and heave it back over his head. “I’ll be back in the evening, with news if nothing else.”

When he turned around, Spike was faced with Andrew’s sympathetic expression. Quite what the boy was thinking, he didn’t know, but as he barged past him Spike honestly didn’t care.

* * *

The first stretch was easy. All right, the slope downwards was steep, but the road was mostly secure, cracked into big enough chunks that a supernaturally coordinated being like Spike didn’t have too much of a problem. It was trickier, of course, to take it at a full enough pelt that none of the others would follow him, but Spike did it nonetheless, gripping his blanket firmly around him and shutting his ears against Dawn’s panicked cries of his name.

Further into town, things got more difficult. Most of the cars were gone, but there were fires burning everywhere. It was too soon for the dust to have settled, and the winds whistling between the burning buildings were churning it up into a fog. The roads that were left were wide enough to cut a secure and obvious route through, but it seemed increasingly absurd, given how dark it was, that if he took his blanket down he would be burned in the afternoon sun.

It was hot, though. Dear Christ almighty, it was hot. Spike had never before been stupid enough to spend a whole day outside, blanket or no, and his arms ached from holding his axe above his head. It didn’t quite make sense that any of his clothes would spontaneously combust when the sun couldn’t get through to burn the thing that was combustible, but nonetheless the burn on his hands from the light swell earlier was only irritated by the sense of sunlight slipping between the weft and warp of the fleece he had overhead.

After an hour or so, Spike was still going down, something like heat sickness churning in his stomach, strain in every part of him. He couldn’t see that much around where he was walking, but the geography of the place had remained thankfully similar enough that he was able to find his way to the school.

When he got there, the site was a mess. In a sinkhole of its own, the school buildings and all its grounds were nothing but dirt and rock and rubble, drained down into a steep, dark pit.

Spike was hardly sorry to see the place go, after the months of misery it had brought him. Nonetheless, the sight brought an even odder feeling to his chest than the heat sickness.

Carefully, he made his descent. He concentrated hard on his footing, not ready to give all this up to the harsh will of the sunshine just yet. Nonetheless, he thought he could see something at the bottom, through the thick dust and murk.

A few feet down, of course, Spike put his weight on a rock that wouldn’t hold him. In a lurching second of self-recrimination, he heaved his blanket around himself, stuck his arms and the axe blade out and tripped, landing on his knee and then his side and then rolling – sliding down the slope. His fangs came out, naturally, and when he hit the bottom he roared. His back slammed into something hard and solid.

Shaking the anger away from himself – generally just shaking – Spike rolled over on the ground. He’d slammed into a white marble statue, it seemed like. It was jagged, like a starburst, or Soviet urban architecture, but it was definitely marble and not concrete. It looked clean and, weirdly, it was covered in golden runes.

As he set his hands on it, they tingled. As he climbed to his feet, though, Spike didn’t give a shit.

It wasn’t a statue, this thing. It was a prison. It was a bear trap, holding up a body by the waist. This body, it was bruised, it was broken and its chin was slumped to its chest. It had bright yellow-gold hair and pearly, creamy skin, the contrast between the two slightly too great for the figure to seem human.

And yet, it was Buffy. A sob came out of Spike’s throat that he couldn’t quite swallow in time. He threw his axe to the ground and reached forward, threw the blanket over both their heads so he could bring two fingers to her neck, right where he’d bitten her before, where the marks were still just about raw.

He should have used his ears, of course. He was a vampire, even as his fangs receded, and Spike was ashamed that he didn’t trust his ears. The world was full of fire, though. It was full of the howling wind. It was full of everything he might have ever wanted.

When he pressed his fingers to Buffy’s throat, they sizzled, burned and blistered like he was touching a crucifix. Spike didn’t care; he waited until he knew and was certain.

She had a pulse. _Thump; thump; thump; thump; thump; thump; thump…_

That was when Spike pulled his scalded fingers back, curling them into a fist he pressed against his mouth.

After a few seconds had passed, he couldn’t help it. “I told you,” he swore at the side of Buffy’s slumped head, though of course he’d done nothing of the sort. Not quite. There were tears in his eyes and he feared he couldn’t quite hold himself together. “You bloody, aggravating _bitch_ ,” he was swearing at her. “I _told_ you we’d survive.”

Spike looked up as far as he could, back the way he’d come. He was weak enough that another sob found its way into his throat, at least two parts happiness but at least one part despair. Because the thing was, of course, that he had no idea how he was going to get them out of this.

“Fuck you,” Spike swore at Buffy again. He leaned in, unable to resist smoothing some of her hair out of her face. His hands trembled; they blistered where they touched her; but God in Heaven she was alive and he could see it on her sleeping face. “Fuck you to hell,” he whispered finally, before he started dragging on one of the runed marble slabs.

It wasn’t long before that was burning his hands as well.

.


	17. PART FIVE (survival)

> “I want the First to feel it. I want it to try and suck me in, to swallow me down into the Hellmouth. I want all the evil in this world to taste what I’ve become and I want it to choke on me, so that all of them can live. Every single one.”
> 
> _Done._  
> 

  
**I**

\-- _earlier_ \--

Spike wasn’t sure quite what to do when Buffy started crying on him. She’d come downstairs dressed as a wet dream – not his, it had to be said, but he wasn’t complaining – and he’d gone through with her little fantasy, because it was fair enough. He got bored of 1630’s basement more than anybody, and it was hardly beyond him to act as the big bad vampire. It had been getting embarrassing, really, his resistance to her charms, so he was up for anything.

By the time Spike had been having to convince Buffy – of all people – that showing skin wasn’t a bad thing, that she had all the right parts and everything in working order… Well, it had done a bang up job in shoving most other concerns to the back of his mind.

Then, of course, he’d managed to get her settled on top of him. She’d blinked a couple of tears from her eyes, but looked so beatific he didn’t think anything of them. He’d been sat up on his palms and could only look at her, every button unbuttoned and every gather pulled loose, the shoulders of her dress slipping down her arms like a dreamer’s Ariadne, tiny Pre-Raphaelite breasts all half-exposed and wanton.

The shagging had happened, and it had been fucking wonderful. But afterwards Buffy was there with a dress still caught around her wrists and she was crying, clutching his shoulders, while he had her by the back of hers.

There’d been a whole thing earlier, so it was possible the nightdress Buffy was wearing was already covered in his stuff – but it was doomed for more, it seemed, as Spike took the moment to pull her off where he was getting droopy and gather her close in his arms.

“All right, love, come on,” Spike tried to comfort her. Buffy could apparently do nothing but sob, one arm wrapped around his back and the other making like it was trying to push him away, its hand clutching the top of his chest. “Let it out, pet,” he tried as her breath hitched, again and again. “There, that’s it.”

God, he was terrified – shaking like a leaf and not just from how Buffy had forgotten the way virgins fucked. He couldn’t say that to Buffy, obviously, not after she’d done all this just to have him feel manly enough to take her to bed. So he didn’t.

“Thought you were in the moment,” he murmured instead, because he really had, when those first tears had fallen. He’d felt them himself. “You should’ve said,” he finished, kissing her on the cheek, then the lips. “What’s… What’s wrong?”

Buffy kissed him back, thank God, sucking air through her nose instead of sobbing. “Nothing,” she said, in a breathy, shagged-out voice. “Nothing’s wrong. These are happy tears.”

A year ago, with this voice on her and the big, green eyes that were staring right into his soul – a moment before they ducked away, hooded by eyelashes – Spike would have believed her. He would have watched her shake the top of her dress from her wrists, felt her caress his neck and chest like a lover, and he would have filed away tonight for the sagas.

As it was, Spike had done a bit of growing up in his time, so he knew better.

“Sing me a new one, love,” Spike told the girl in his arms. Buffy was squeezing her lips together, as though that would hold back the tears. “I can tell when you’re talking shite.”

She looked at him again, her eyes still wet, but she didn’t cry this time when she cuddled in close. Spike held her as tight to him as he could, pressing his mouth into the top of her hair. “It’s just… Been a while, you know?” Buffy said, as though this truth was an odd thing to be telling him. “All of last year, no matter what we did, we never… And before that, going back… Going all the way back, I guess.”

There were times when loving Buffy was easy enough. There were other times when Spike felt like he would be dissolved in the feeling, like sugar in hot water. This was one of those times, and he tried very, very hard to remain sarcastic. “Don’t tell me the virgin thing was for _you_ ,” he said.

“No!” Buffy immediately replied, digging into her dress to fondle his bits. With nails. Again, Spike told himself that sarcasm was the only way. Sarcasm or else silence. “I just,” she continued when he gave up, wriggling. “It’s been a long time since sex was special and I – forgot, I guess? How special it could feel.”

Oh, but then sometimes the words were easy. “You wanna kick up your legs and keep talking?” Spike asked her, pulling away a little. “I really feel like listening to this.” He did, actually.

Again, thank God, Buffy looked up at him. The devil was in her big, teary eyes. “OK,” she said.

\-- _now_ \--

Blisters on his hands and tears unmoving from his eyes, Spike looked at her. Buffy was still as a martyr’s statue and there was nothing he could do to get the stone circle away from where it pinned her at the waist.

All right, so he wasn’t a complete idiot. He knew this was the Seal of Danzalthar, somehow born anew from the way Spike had stared at it the last time, tied up and cut into on the First’s whirligig of pain. It was a tribute to good now, more Enya than Pantera, although that was possibly an insult to the thing. The gold runes that gleamed from the marble were illegible, not in any language Spike recognised, which was a fair few.

It was bullshit, was what it was. Spike knew enough magic to know it wasn’t required to be an angel to work with anything holy. He was a demon, of course, so it burned him, but it wouldn’t destroy him outright just to get something working.

The thing was, he just didn’t know what to do. When he looked at Buffy, the blanket over both of them, Spike knew she was in pain. It was possible she wasn’t feeling it, not with what she’d become, but there was pain in her somewhere and it tore Spike into bits. He’d tried everything: yanking on the stones himself, wedging his axe behind them for leverage…

 _Wait._ His axe. Spike looked down at his weapon, where it rested by his feet. He wondered if it could possibly be so easy. With his foot on the haft, he rocked the blade back and forth and remembered, how he’d bled for the previous seal.

At Buffy’s feet, right underneath her serious, worn-out boots, there was some sort of design in the rock. Spike could just see it, between the gaps in the stone. It was golden like everything else, but swirling, captivating. Hardly a goat with its tongue hanging out, but it was a Celtic knot – or some Islamic interlacing thing, like the Alhambra. It drew the eye and kept it, worked that gaze into concentration.

When he looked at it, Spike couldn’t help but think that all this seal wanted was a sacrifice. Of course, a vampire like him wasn’t worthy – he never had been – but it was possible he was better than nothing.

Looking down at the axe blade, Spike figured it couldn’t make anything worse. He gathered his nerve, brought his hand forward and slid it down the curve in front of him, sliced his raw, burnt hand open on the steel.

It hurt worse than many wounds of Spike’s had for a long time, but he didn’t much give a damn.

 _This is for the Slayer, right?_ he tried to make the seal hear him, rolling the axe forward with his boot and as he stepped forward. Earnestly now, he squeezed his hand closed and held it over the holy knot, watching the blood drip one drop after another.

It was a demon’s blood, so when each drop hit the design it fizzled, vanishing immediately into a small spark of light. That light burned Spike’s eyes, but he didn’t care, just watched. Gradually, the seal began to glow its own, sharp glow, the golden lines more than bright in the darkness as they illuminated this pit of the old Hellmouth.

As it worked, the way Spike had hoped it would, he’d expected that he would have to jump out of the way of the falling marble slabs. It wasn’t like that at all. As the glow spread from the seal’s central engraving, the white marble seemed to soften, the five points splitting and fanning out into golden-veined petals, like a giant waterlily. They blossomed, unfurling slowly outwards so that Spike was free to slip between them and catch Buffy before she fell, his arms under the pits of her jacket.

Her breath was warm, flowing gently from her nose onto his lips, and Spike knew this was only the beginning. Yet he was beyond grateful as he laid her down gently on the soft bed of this new seal. He had to get his bag off his back. It had his first aid.

\-- _earlier_ \--

She was underneath him the next time she cried, Buffy, so Spike saw exactly when the tears hit her. Right after the first tremble she was shaking, and then she was grabbing him in a way that had nothing to do with how she’d been grabbing him a second ago. Her head ducked into his shoulder and she was sobbing, not making a sound but heaving tears onto his skin.

Spike rolled them over, pretty sure this would be it for the night. At least, he thought, they were both sincerely pliable right now, so it hadn’t been too bad a run for their first innings back on the green. Buffy was squirming right up onto his chest, like she thought she could fit all of herself on there if she just curled up close enough. It was a losing game, but Spike got the idea, gathering his arms around all the limbs of her that were slipping free.

“I’m so scared, Spike,” she breathed eventually, cradling his face. Admitting it. “So, so…” Then she was sobbing again.

If he hadn’t already been on his back, you could have knocked Spike over with a feather. It was a little hard to talk with a Buffy on his lungs, of course, so he kept quiet, holding her closer.

Buffy sniffed, crying but barely making a sound, like these were her very darkest thoughts. “I don’t know how – or if we…” she trailed off, then tried again. “We have to win. I know we have to win – but I… What do I do now? How do we go on?”

As far as Spike was concerned, he knew it would be easy to let her dwell. The pair of them could happily wallow down here until daybreak, having a shag and having a cry until someone needed them. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a few weepies of his own he would be glad to get off his chest.

The thing was, Buffy expected him to set an example. Spike knew she did. It was the more productive side of their old co-dependent streak. “Don’t talk twaddle, love,” he whispered right back at her, gathering strength. The kiss he laid on her cheek was perfunctory. “You know exactly what you need to do.”

It seemed that Buffy had had more than enough for today, so she shook her head like a child, telling him, “Nooo,” even as Spike rocked them forward and dumped Buffy on the ground feet first.

She stood there naked and wretched, forearms covering her chest as she clutched her hands around her neck. As Spike stood up, her eyes were lit with betrayal, but Spike just reckoned that was his birth right. “Yes,” he said.

There would be pillow talk another night, if he had his way. Aeons of pillow talk that would stretch on forever. For now, though, Spike knew he would live without it, and so he was going to.

Sweeping a hand across Buffy’s stomach, Spike walked past her. Her muscles hitched. He resisted. “You’re going to go upstairs,” he continued, heading for the dryer on the other side of the room. This was what was going to happen. It had to. “You’re going to snuggle down in your own cosy bed.” There was a basket of clean washing sitting on top of the machine, and he had the misfortune to know exactly what was there inside it: exactly what he needed. “And tomorrow,” he finished telling her, “you’re going to get up like it’s any other day in this godforsaken apocalypse, and carry on.”

There. After a brief rummage, Spike found exactly what he was looking for: a pair of Buffy’s normal pyjamas. They were sexy things – a dark green satin set of shorts and a camisole – but they were also the perfect camouflage, even if he did say so himself.

He turned back to Buffy with them, staring down the naked waif look she was sporting.

“But I –” she resisted, refusing to come over to him from where she stood by the bed.

Thankfully, Spike still had his legs, so it was easy to stride back over to her. Buffy watched his cock as he walked, but despite evidence to the contrary he wasn’t always that easy.

When she put a hand on his chest, though, Buffy did get him to pause. “But I’m all sweaty,” she told him impishly, like this was something Spike couldn’t get away from. It was better, at least, that tone of her voice. Glancing down at the pyjamas in his hands, she added, “And you spent so much time washing those.”

He hadn’t, actually. Nonetheless, there was something in Spike that enjoyed these attempts to play him. Dropping the pyjamas on his bed for the moment, he swirled his hands through the bundle of sheets they’d rucked up and came out with the old nightgown. “All right, then,” he told Buffy, bundling the white thing in his hand. No one could resent him one last play.

It was a little worse for wear, the nightie, and it had even more material to it than Spike remembered, but it worked perfectly well as a cloth for cleaning Buffies with. This Buffy squawked as he rubbed her down, skipping from foot to foot as he went under her armpits and down her back and behind her knees and between her legs,. She didn’t put up any more protest than that, but it was funny. Her arms flailed everywhere, never grabbing the same place twice.

“There you are,” Spike reminded her, tucking his mouth as close to Buffy’s ear as he could while he scrubbed. “You’d never shag a vampire, would you?” It made her squeak and blush when he got her right where the most of him was. Really, had half a mind to throw her back on the bed and be done with it, but he settled for a thorough rubdown. “You’re a good little Slayer,” he promised, even as her tits rolled over the side of his hand.

When it was done, Buffy’s skin was pink and flushed all over, her eyes wide and bright like she’d never had anyone dare be so forward. Spike smirked at her, figuring that she could see how hard his dick was sticking up, so it was all a matter of her ability to resist rather than his.

“All clean now,” he said, picking up the satin bits again as he tossed the nightgown aside. “In you go.”

Buffy took the camisole from him with a rather suspicious alacrity, not even complaining when he had her stepping into the shorts before she’d pulled it over her head. Spike should have seen it coming, of course, because once she was dressed the Slayer attacked him, grabbing the back of his head and slamming her face into his.

Worse than this, though – because this was usually the sort of thing Spike could live with – Buffy had somehow got her own hands on his cottony friend. It was like a big, heavy cloud and she wrapped it around his cock, busily wanking him off while she snogged the unlife out of him.

It wasn’t difficult to resist. Spike came in what felt like about five seconds. That was when Buffy pulled away, smirking her own little smirk like the cat who’d got the cream.

Both of Spike’s legs were trembling. It was difficult to keep himself upright and Spike wondered if he needed to. He wondered how Buffy would react if he fell to his knees right there in front of her. “You’re a terrible fucking Slayer,” he accused anyway, unable to keep the neediness out of his voice. God, the want he felt for her…

Blessed be, Buffy came in close again, scratching the back of Spike’s neck with her fingernails. Her smirk resolved into a smile. “And you’re a good man,” she promised, as if he might have been about to spend the night worrying after her Dracula skit.

Pshaw, Spike thought. How little she knew him. There were going to be many, many other things on his mind tonight, he was certain. Somewhat.

“Here,” Buffy added, presumably off the doubt in his eyes. She shoved the now frankly nasty stained nightgown into his chest. Spike looked at it. “Something to remember me by,” she said, ambiguous as ever.

Then Buffy was gone, before Spike could think of anything to say.

\-- _earlier_ \--

The flash of light burned his eyes before Spike had a chance to take anything in. He blinked, and ahead of him Buffy paused, turning around once in the Bronze’s storeroom.

 _Hmm…_ There was a voice in Spike’s head, just inside his ear. From the way Buffy looked at him, it was in hers too. _That would have incinerated most vampires. Maybe you are different, after all._

“What?” Buffy screeched, turning again to try and find the source of the voice. Spike was mostly looking at the beer on the shelves. Who knew this place had once served London Pride? “Are you serious?” Buffy continued, her focus on what was possibly a more pressing matter. “How dare you?”

Spike caught sight of it then, the dragon. Beatrice. She was perched on a middle shelf in the far corner, all white-gold, gleaming scales and a slithering white tongue. She was about the size of a salamander, maybe smaller.

_When lo! as one who, in a mirror, spies  
The shining of a flambeau at his back_

For a holy dragon, she wasn’t very big, but Spike supposed she didn’t need to be. As she flittered to another shelf – wide, pearlescent wings behind her so bright that Spike couldn’t quite look at them – he tapped Buffy on the shoulder. “Here, Slayer,” he said.

_I well remember, did befall to me,  
Looking upon the beauteous eyes, whence love  
Had made the leash to take me._

_Yet I can feel the evil in you. You are ridden with it. How can that be so?_

The dragon’s voice burned like divinity. Spike shut his eyes against it, even as he felt the rush of the burning light again – saw it in the red veins of his eyelids. He had to stop thinking about the _Divine Comedy_. There was no good for him there: if this dragon was anything like the Almighty then she wouldn’t rest until she’d burned him clean through.

“Hey!” Buffy sounded a little panicked, which was sweet of her. “Will you cut it out? We’re not here for Spike, OK? We’re here for me. We want to know…”

 _You don’t know what you’re here for,_ Beatrice interrupted, dismissing Buffy immediately.

Spike could feel the dragon working through his mind, digging past every layer of goodness he’d tried to batten down over the bad parts. It was… Well, it was pretty harrowing.

“Will you leave him alone?” Buffy demanded, somewhere far away. Spike had always liked the idea of an angel coming to save him, but it did mean her falling quite a long way. “He passed your test, didn’t he? What more do you want?”

Something was going wrong. Spike could feel his gorge rising, nastiness taking hold of him underneath his tongue. The dragon was purging him out, like she didn’t already know what was hidden down inside of him.

 _How dare you, Slayer?_ she began, as Spike realised what she’d found.

\-- _now_ \--

It took a while, but eventually Spike got Buffy looking like she wasn’t about to fall into pieces. The pit they were in was deep enough that it didn’t take long for the walls to award them with a clean patch of shade, and from then on Spike was at least able to work without his blanket.

It was all a bit obscene, really: he got his girl’s jacket off and pulled her make-do shirt as high as it would go on her ribs. He left the buttons but undid the ties so she could breathe, and now with every breath he could just about make out the shallow valley between her breasts under the front of the high waistband.

Spike shook himself, pulling bandages and tape from his bag so he could get to work. Most of Buffy’s skin wasn’t broken; it just scalded him to touch it. There were a few cuts among the bruises, presumably from the jagged edges of the seal when it had been the mark of evil. He had no doubt that half her ribs were broken, but he dearly hoped it wasn’t her spine as well. Obviously, he’d been careful, laying her down, but it wasn’t good enough really, and unless one of the seal’s new lily petals was going to play out the full of his burgeoning Thumbelina fantasies, Spike didn’t have anything like a stretcher on him.

That was a worry for the future, Spike decided, drawing antiseptic wipes anywhere that looked like Buffy needed them, then focusing his attention on binding her up.

Her arm was broken as well, Spike realised. “You’re a bloody fool,” Spike told her, looking around for some sort of splint and coming up empty. Buffy’s eyes, of course, remained stubbornly closed, even if her cream-coloured cheeks no longer seemed quite so ashen.

It was going to be the most embarrassing piece of field surgery ever, but there seemed like nothing else for it. Throwing a glance up to the murky afternoon sky, Spike took off his boots and looked at the options in front of him. He had an axe and a crappy pair of round-ended bandage scissors.

“I hope you’re happy about this,” he told Buffy’s Sleeping Beauty form, using both blades in the end to get his soles cut away from the leather above them. The two bits of rubber made a fairly effective sandwich, eventually, to get Buffy’s forearm bound reasonably straight. The stiff bovver-boot leather, on the other hand, was better than nothing, Spike decided, to wrap around her ribs and waist.

It wasn’t doing all that much to stop her bending, Spike decided when he’d finished, feeling the warmth of the seal’s central panel on his feet now, through his socks. Nonetheless, they had a few hours left ahead of them, before Spike had to figure out to get them back to the edge of town. As it was, he figured Buffy would need his duster so he could hold her without burning himself through to the bone.

_“Spike! Spike! Are you there?”_

Caught entirely off guard, Spike sank into a defensive crouch as he looked up. His hands fell to Buffy’s stomach and arm, to make sure he knew where she was, and it took all of three seconds for him to remember that he’d just spent the last hour avoiding the burning touch of her skin.

“Ow; fuck!” he swore, standing up again as he sucked two fingers into his mouth. He was going to need a serious drink after this.

_“Hello? Spike! Can you hear me?”_

She sounded far away, calling into the aether like she didn’t much expect a response, but it was Dawn shouting for him. What the hell was she doing here?

Spike moved to the edge of the seal, the base of the petals bouncy underneath his toes. He wasn’t in the mood to climb the side of this pit any more times than he had to, but he could just imagine Dawn trying to get down and ending up breaking her neck.

“I’m down here!” he yelled up into the afternoon, against his better judgement.

Right then, as if to tell him off for being stupid, a small glowy light appeared, just over the slope of the rocks. It wasn’t white or gold, thank God, or any other colour that he was quickly becoming sick of. Instead, it was a zippy and green, bobbing down through the air like a bumble bee.

The thing flittered around his head, no matter how much Spike tried to bat it away. “Bloody… pest,” he swore at it, but that just seemed to make the thing keener. If anything, though, every time Spike hit it his burns felt a little better, so he was glad at least that they had a mutually beneficial relationship.

“Spike!” And then Dawn was shouting at him directly.

When he looked up this time, Spike could just about make her out on the edge of the pit. She wasn’t alone, which he was emphatically grateful for. Willow, he figured out, was standing next to her: she waved. There was someone else up there as well, though, and he couldn’t quite figure out who it was. “Stay there!” Spike shouted at them all anyway. The buzzy magic thing bobbed by his ear. “Don’t try to come down!”

“Is that Buffy?” Willow shouted, as though she was happy to ignore him if he didn’t answer. “Is she…”

Spike glanced behind himself again. She looked pretty ridiculous now, Buffy. Lying on a piece of marble that looked like it belonged in a spa for particularly well-off hippies, she had a big brick of bandages around her right arm, the ends of them betraying that her medical care was courtesy of Dr. Marten and his boots. Her top was all frayed and rucked up and generally ugly on her chest, while she had two random shapes of black leather held to her ribs with yet more bandages. Her eyes were closed and she was frowning, like she knew exactly how much of a fashion disaster she was right now.

“Yes,” he shouted up to others, not taking his eyes off the sight in front of him. Honestly, he’d never been happier. “She’s alive.”

There was murmuring above him – a discussion Spike couldn’t quite make out – and then without warning he and Buffy were both levitating – her poker-straight on her back and him like he was being craned out by a safety harness.

“Now, hang on!” Spike yelped, reaching desperately around him for his stuff. He could see the sunshine where it was still cutting through the air above him.

Thankfully, in a particularly heavy metal rendition of Mary Poppins, Spike’s stuff decided it wanted to come along for the ride too. All his medical bits and leftover scraps of shoe tidied themselves into his bag, which shut and fastened of its own accord. His axe, the one Buffy had given him the night before, if it was only a night – that bounced its way into his hand, handle first. His blanket, meanwhile, did a dance of straightening itself out and extending like a parasol above him, directly into the angle of the sun.

It was times like this that magic seemed like a very handy thing indeed. So Spike thought, anyway, as he watched Buffy float free of the seal that had held her and himself freed from what would have been a seriously nasty climb.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Spike asked Dawn the way he’d wanted to, once they’d reached the top of the pit. He glared at Willow, because clearly she was responsible.

The witch looked away, and Spike looked with her. The remains of the school weren’t looking any better, and he was glad at least that the Principal’s office had had that direct access alley to the front of the school. It hadn’t been too fun at the time wrestling the rocket launcher free from Buffy’s arms, but it meant they were on some of the firmer ground that Sunnydale still had right now.

Still, Spike could be angry, and he would be. He turned his ire back on Dawn. “Why aren’t you safe at the bus?”

Dawn was looking at the ground, kicking a couple of loose concrete chunks. “Willow wasn’t sure she knew the way,” she said, as though it wasn’t the entire truth but Spike was hurting her feelings.

He looked around, taking in a little more of the surroundings. Willow was inspecting Buffy, straightening a bit of his leather on her ribs. That was fair enough. The other figure, who he’d clocked from down below, well, that turned out to be one Lydia Chalmers, who looked grim.

She was nodding to Willow, saying things Spike couldn’t understand with all of her concentration. “Yes, the _incantatio_ is in effect. The blast we saw earlier… She needs stabilising; rest. But she’s done it. She has done it.”

Then she and the witch were guiding Buffy’s body gently forward, away from Spike and into the murk. _Not_ getting themselves burned for the privilege, as far as Spike could see – but taking her away from where he could reach towards…

Was that a golf cart?

Spike turned back to Dawn. She explained, “The others are all trying to deal with this whole Angel situation, by phone mostly…”

Weirdly, she looked eager, like the adventure was only just beginning. Else it was the adrenaline of realising Buffy was still with them. Spike had had that earlier.

“The guys and – and Anya – they’re looking after the Potentials,” Dawn continued, as if she couldn’t get the words out quick enough. She glanced behind her, up the long slope of smoggy town. “And we went looking for supplies,” she said, “but the nearest place was that golf club you always see signs for?” Spike nodded, knowing where she meant. “And the spell had hit that too,” she finished, not quite meeting his eyes. The adrenaline seemed to leave her at that moment. “Or else it was abandoned anyways,” the explanation wound down, “so we loaded up on bar snacks and the food in the kitchens and those mini cans of soda, and then I saw the golf carts and figured there’d be keys somewhere.”

It was a very nice tale, really, though Spike had no interest in hearing what mess Angel had got himself into now. Still, he waited, hoping that Dawn would eventually get round to explaining what the thing was doing _here_.

“Robin and Andrew took one on the highway,” was what she actually said, still looking past Spike. “To see if they could find more stuff.”

“Dawn,” Spike cut her off, trying to remind her that she was talking nonsense.

“I can’t figure it out,” she then quite suddenly cut into whatever Spike was going to say. Her expression was harsh – her eyes glossy, but clear. “Did you save her?” she asked, a little desperately. “Or are you the reason that she’s lying there?”

With that question shot at him, Spike was the one who couldn’t meet Dawn’s eyes. He looked over to Willow and Lydia again, still grateful for the blanket floating above him. They weren’t talking to him, but maybe there wasn’t need for them to right now.

The golf cart was one of those kinds with the little canopy roof, two rows of seats and a small area for storage at the back. It was incongruously white and cheery in the ruins, the canopy trimmed with green, and in time it had one unconscious Slayer lying on the cushions of its backseat, as glorious and painful to look at as goodness.

“I don’t know, Dawn,” Spike told her, because he didn’t, really. Presumably he could tell her until the cows came home that this had been Buffy’s idea – Buffy’s sacrifice. The thing was, he’d always wonder whether the things he’d done hadn’t had something to do with it, or else if he could have convinced her otherwise, given half a chance. “But she’s alive,” he reminded himself, turning back to the girl. “That’s the main thing.”

Dawn looked as uncertain as Spike felt. The frown wouldn’t shift from her forehead and there was a stubborn sort of downturn to the edges of her mouth. Nonetheless, she stepped towards him and Spike couldn’t not hold out his arm. As they headed off towards the vehicle and their final escape from this place, Dawn accepted the embrace and Spike held her securely to him, round her shoulders.

“So. Did you get any of those mini pretzel things, when you were at the golf place?”

“Duh; obviously. What do you take me for?”

Behind them, the seal re-solidified into stone, coming to peace.

* * *

It wasn’t entirely clear to Spike whether the 100cc golf cart, or whatever it was, was more or less efficient than walking back himself. The thing was slow. All right, it was good transport for them all, with its two rows of seats like a jeep and the storage trough in the back where he was sat now, all covered by a prissy scallop-edged canopy. He tried not to think about that though, holding onto Buffy who was at least laid out flat on the rear seats – her jacket just enough to protect his hands. Dawn was the other side of her, wedged between the bench Buffy was lying on and the front pair of seats, like he’d been back on the schoolbus.

No matter how slow they went, though, it never crossed Spike’s mind to complain. Willow’s spell on his blanket yet remained in effect, and that was the handiest thing he’d ever come across. More than that, it was a relief not to do the journey alone this time.

They made it back to the edge of town at a snail’s pace, the electric cart wheezing and groaning as it took them the last few yards uphill. Chalmers’ grip was determined on the wheel, while Willow did a bit of backseat driving. While the Watcher swore and swore in her prim, Watcherly way, Spike could tell she had grown fond of the machine.

And that was true even as the cart puttered to a stop a hundred and fifty yards from the finish line. “Come on, you bastard,” Lydia hissed at it, finally breaking into the classics. Spike had to laugh, and it earned him a glare. They were by all measures back at camp. People were gathering; Xander was running over to them. It was time to get out and walk.

Yet Spike didn’t move. He looked at Dawn, raising his eyebrows in a question. She shook her head, almost smiling, and neither of them let go of Buffy.

Metal crunched as Chalmers yanked the key out of the cart and shoved it back in again. She slammed her hand on the steering wheel three times, producing three hollow thuds from the rubber. Then she turned the key and with a soft, whiny whirr the machine seemed to take the accelerator pedal and discover its last remaining reserve of juice.

Slowly, and then a little quicker, with all the pace and ceremony of a triumphal procession, the rescue mission pootled forward to meet the waiting crowd.

“And will you look at that,” Spike told Buffy, only then forgiving her. He thought he could see a smile start to touch in on her frown; he couldn’t believe it. “We made it.”

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lines of poetry Spike happens upon are from Henry Cary's 1814 translation of Dante's _Paradiso_ , canto XXVIII. It's a thing!


	18. survival II (epilogue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, after some feedback from a few readers, I realised there was a bit of an imbalance in the final third of this fic... So, this is not a new chapter, but there are new bits now included from chapter twelve onwards. I hope it's not too confusing!!
> 
> * * *

\-- _earlier_ \--

_Done._

Buffy kept her eyes on the dragon. She had been flittering around while she talked, and even though the creature had agreed to her request, Beatrice remained in mid-air. Her small body was held upright by big, bright wings, which shone like light on soap bubbles – if the soap bubbles were made of burning white magnesium.

“What do you mean, ‘done’?” she asked eventually, more than enough suspicious after the last time she’d been here in the Bronze with Spike.

_I mean whatever you say in this modern age. Done. Agreed. Fine. OK._

The dragon swooped and turned back to one of the shelves, landing among beer bottles with a tink-tink of her claws. If you asked Buffy, it was a pretty rude manoeuvre, turning away in the middle of the conversation, and it was clear that the dragon’s tone was curt.

However, Buffy decided to say nothing about that. “Well, then,” she carried on regardless, “What happens now?”

Beatrice prowled along the shelf, bottle to bottle and blue crate to green. _Take one,_ she said. _Drink. Enter the Hellmouth and see if you find deliverance._

“Does it matter which one I choose?” Buffy asked, looking around at the array of craft and exotic beers. Everything she had broken before, with Spike, that seemed to have been cleared up now, and there were some empty spaces where the crates had once been. The storeroom was more than full enough though, nonetheless.

 _Of course,_ the dragon replied.

Buffy wasn’t too surprised. She tried to remember the thing from Indiana Jones. What was it? She needed the cup of a carpenter, didn’t she? But then – she knew nothing about beer. This wasn’t gonna work.

“What’s the deal with the deliverance?” she asked to buy herself time, looking around at all the labels and tops. There were dark beers and light beers – tall thin bottles and fat squat ones, all in their own crates and some left free-standing on the shelf

 _You have chosen the ritual,_ Beatrice commented, almost sounding amused by Buffy’s antics. At least one of them was. _It is others who will determine your survival._

The last of what the dragon said only half-penetrated Buffy’s mind, because she was distracted. Over in the corner, out of reach of the ceiling light, there lay a brown cardboard box that was sitting open on the floor. It contained maybe a dozen Dingoes At My Baby t-shirts, down from whatever number had been in there originally, which Buffy knew because there bloody handprints and smudges all over the box’s flaps.

On that shelf above the box, where a crate once might have been, there was a lonely bottle with a thick neck, made out of heavy glass. When Buffy came over to look at it, the beer seemed to be some sort of Sonoma County microbrew, with a picture of a mountain creek on it.

The bottle hadn’t broken, Buffy remembered, when she’d hit Spike over the head before. The little beer bottle who could had kept on going, even in the panic that had followed.

“I’ll be fine,” Buffy said, as she figured out what the dragon was telling her. She cast a glance over her shoulder as she picked up the beer from the shelf. “You got a bottle opener in here?”

 _None of us may know where goodness ends,_ said Beatrice, even as she flew in to pull off the bottle top with her claws. _That is the difference between the light and the dark._ She hovered again, the golden cap caught in her feet. _Those who feel the light’s absence may find it, but only ever look upon more before it vanishes…_ She wheeled in the air, turning once and then looking back at Buffy again. _What makes you so certain of your own desired outcome?_

Looking at the tiny lizard, Buffy made sure to meet the dragon’s slit golden eyes before she raised her drink. “Because,” she said, “I know who’s gonna do the deciding.”

\-- _earlier_ \--

Oh.

_“The little death’s what they call it, love.”_

Oh.

_“But you – will you…?”_

_“I promise.”_

Oh– It was now.

\-- _afterwards_ \--

When Buffy woke up, she was lying on a lumpy, scratchy bench cushion. Looking up, if not so much around, this cushion turned out to be the backseat of a bus. Possibly a schoolbus. Her right arm was compressed into some whacked-out cast and it felt like she was wearing a corset. A real one – not a fake, fantasy bodice thing.

She was in quite a lot of pain, so she didn’t much want to move. Thankfully, Spike’s head then appeared in her line of vision, upside down. “Spike,” she said, blinking at him. He looked grateful to find her alive; she felt grateful to be alive. There was a whole grateful thing, with no small amount of surprise. “If you wanted to go parking, could you not have found us a fancier car?”

That line, which Buffy was quite proud of given the circumstances, it made Spike crack into a grin. He swung from the seat onto the floor so that their heads were both the same way round. “Only the best for you, Slayer,” he shot back, like she was supposed to act appreciative instead of just feel it.

Of course, that was the moment when Buffy realised they weren’t actually alone. “Oh, so it’s OK if _you_ go parking,” her sister snarked at her, from somewhere else not quite behind her head.

Buffy rolled her head slightly and there was Dawn, looking down at her over the back of the seat in front. “I’m older than you,” Buffy told her, as though she wasn’t actually physically incapacitated. “And I have a steady boyfriend.”

“Oh puh-lease, Buffy,” Dawn replied, hooking her elbows over the seat and leaning her chin on the backs of her fingers. She smiled like she knew it all. “You and Spike wouldn’t know steady if it hit you with a ten-ton anvil.”

Buffy glanced at her steady, who was still sitting on the floor, leaning on a raised knee. Right now he had one eyebrow raised.

“I can’t work out if she’s got a point or not,” he said.

When he said it, though, Spike was definitely being sarcastic, so Buffy wondered if he was thinking what she was thinking. _Steady is as steady does…_ “She’ll figure it out some time,” was what Buffy replied, looking around a little more to get her bearings.

It was then that she realised the bus was moving, and also that it was night outside. Both these facts were kind of surprising. “How long was I out?” she asked her two observers. “And where are we going?”

Spike and Dawn looked at each other, as though this was a very long story. Feeling left out, Buffy pouted, but they didn’t notice her as they first started explaining.

“Well,” Dawn said first, rolling her eyes. “The original plan was to go to Los Angeles and take over Angel’s hotel, you know?”

“But,” Spike cut in, narrowing his eyes a little at Buffy’s expression, “it turns out Peaches wasn’t quite as efficient in dealing with the pile of shit fate dealt _him_ , so –”

“So,” Dawn finished, like she had no patience for the cutesy-grumpy expressions Buffy was challenging Spike with, “they’ve got a whole thing going on with Angelus on the loose and the sun all blacked out and some kind of ‘Beast’ guy they need to deal with…”

“Wha –“ Buffy tried to interrupt, almost sitting up before her ribs told her, no, that wasn’t happening today.

Spike was on his knees in an instant, his frown serious – while Dawn finished filling her in. “But it turns out that Principal Wood has a friend from principal school down in San Diego. Or… It might have been a regular school, where they both worked one time.” She shook her head. “Anyway – she said she’d put us up in the gym, like a refugee camp? So we’re gonna go there until this whole Angel thing blows over. Or Mr. Travers can get a load of cash released for a motel.”

“Right,” Buffy replied, trying to take it all in. It was fair to say she didn’t want to take on Angelus right now. All the same, she felt bad for Los Angeles.

“They’ve got that psycho jailbird Slayer on it,” Spike told her, drawing her attention to him. He said it in a way as if he knew Buffy wouldn’t find the news reassuring, but as though she should realise it was better than nothing. “Willow’s stayed behind to help out, with Giles. Think he’s got delusions of being useful.”

Buffy suppressed a snigger. Spike looked back at her with a fond grin. It made the corners of his eyes go all crinkly.

“I’m gonna listen to my Walkman now,” Dawn said, as the back of her head disappeared behind the seat. Buffy frowned at her through the cushions. “Don’t talk loud.”

There were understated welcomes back and there were understated welcomes back, Buffy thought, still staring at her sister’s absent head. Nonetheless, it quickly became apparently why she might have decided to abandon her and Spike to their own private world. There was heat in Spike’s, after all – real heat as he shuffled forward, leaving their faces mere inches apart.

“Was I out for a long time?” Buffy asked more softly. People were talking all down to the front of the bus, all in different languages and in American and super-snippy British, but she knew Spike could hear her. “There was… The seal got me and then there was singing.” She could see the breath moving in and out of Spike’s nose. His hand hovered a little shy of her cheek, like he was afraid to touch her.

Nonetheless, Spike was smiling, in his soft and slightly sneery way, and it was pretty much a sight for recently dragonified sore eyes. “About twelve hours,” he said, like it was an achievement. “Give or take. You totalled Sunny-D.”

“Oh,” Buffy replied, not thinking any second thoughts about that right now. Her head was mostly light and airy, filling her with something that tasted sweet on her tongue. “And I didn’t get to see it.”

As enjoyable as their banter was, Buffy was getting bored of Spike not touching her. She felt crappy enough as it was. Her left arm was still good, it felt like, so she brought up her own hand to the one near her cheek and flattened his fingers close against her cheekbone.

When she first touched him, Spike flinched, as though he was expecting it to hurt. Buffy wasn’t quite sure why, until she dragged his hand in front of her face. There, she could see that it was marked with burns and blisters. “Did I do that?” she asked, knowing it had been a possibility she would burn him while under the spell, but feeling odd now that turned out to have been true.

“Right up until – well, now,” Spike told her, like it had been pretty much a pain in the backside.

“Huh,” Buffy replied, wondering how she could make it up to him. “I’m sorry,” she said, contemplating the hand in front of her.

In the end, the easiest thing to do to state her intentions seemed to be to suck Spike’s burnt fingers into her mouth. She took two, in the end, fore and middle, and swirled her tongue around them experimentally. Eventually she came down on the perspective that it was weird to find him slightly warm. His skin all puckered up: not her favourite.

Buffy met Spike’s eyes as she popped him free. “Tastes like jerky,” she told him, holding a serious expression for a moment before she broke into a grin. That, of course, was mostly because her slutty vampire boyfriend decided to get a clue and kiss her face off. This real part of him tasted bitter, but she was OK with that.

It was good to be alive, Buffy decided, committing as much of herself to the kiss as would move. Spike did most of the work, holding her face and smoothing back her hair and rubbing their noses together – but she was into it anyway.

They’d go to San Diego, definitely. They’d do the refugee thing, with all these people. There would be a lot more of this stuff, and it would all roll along from there.

And one day, Buffy promised herself – again – she would tell this guy how much she loved him.


End file.
